Tools mentioned in this video:
Today I am trying something new: a video case study!
Why? A few reasons.
First of all, I am in “beast mode” right now recording videos for Analytics Course. My mission with this course is to create and assemble the best Google Analytics education available on the Internet, and I look forward to the hard work involved with achieving that goal throughout 2016.
After recording 15 videos over the past two weeks of lengths 15 to 45 minutes, I realized that publishing videos can be more effective (and takes far less time) than writing a blog post.
Writing a blog post often takes me 5-10 hours, whereas a 15 minute video might take 2 hours to complete. I don't currently have the time to dedicate a full day each week to blog posts, but I can find a few hours to record a video.
Second, I realized that since everything in the analytics course is behind a paywall, nobody can really get a feel for what my videos are like and how I teach. Sure, they can watch Lesson 2 for free here, but I wanted to create some content for Jeffalytics (and my new YouTube channel).
Lastly, it's fun. I have a lot of fun recording videos, and I know that many of you will enjoy watching them. There are some things you just can't do on a blog post that you can do in video. Motion is one of them. Showing my personality is another. Live action can be effective than a screenshots. Pictures are worth a thousand words.
Videos? They can relay information in a very precise manner.
Case in point, the 13 minute video above. It is pretty darn effective at showing you how you can generate more leads. It also sets the tone for a 4 part series that I will be releasing over the next several weeks.
So in 13 minutes, we bond over solving a problem, we share successes, we get smarter, and we take on a challenge together.
Why email list building/segmentation has become a priority for Jeffalytics in 2016
Currently I'm a little over-obsessed with list building. While I probably should have been obsessed with list building years ago, I was a bit late in the game. Why?
Because I hate every single piece of email marketing software in existence (save for my current love, Active Campaign). Most email marketing software made capturing an email address easy, but segmenting that email address a painful process.
That meant I could send a newsletter to a wide range of email visitors, but sending specific emails to these people was difficult. It involved API calls, unsubscribes, and a lot of headaches. I would get started with one email platform, realize that it didn't do what I needed, and then just give up.
Here is a sample of both my frustration with email marketing and how great the community is for providing suggestions.
Does anyone have a recommendation for best value email marketing/automation tool for my business? Have tried most and hate them all.
— Jeff Sauer (@jeffsauer) January 22, 2016
After starting and stalling with email for 2+ years, I have finally settled on Active Campaign. This awesome tool has gotten me excited about email again.
With that excitement comes empowerment. I am now empowered to go out and capture email addresses, send them messages and do much more with all of these email addresses I have been capturing over the years.
The video above is the first of a 4-part series where I share that excitement with you. We talk about how I captured more leads with my existing traffic (this video), how you can do this yourself (next video), a check in after we implement these changes on my site (third video) and a summary of what we learned from the experiment (fourth video).
It should be a lot of fun!
Our live case study: Getting more leads from your existing traffic
Now that I have gotten that preamble out of the way, let's get to the concepts we cover in our video. This is a companion to my post How I Got 10 Extra Leads a Day From Existing SEO Traffic with 10 Minutes of Work from last year. The main difference is an updated time frame and the companion video.
So who wants more leads?
Everybody!
Who does not have time to do a lot of work to get leads?
Everybody!
Well, let’s make this easy then!
This article covers the following topics:
- How to get more leads from your existing traffic
- Where to look in Google Analytics to find weak spots
- How to use your analytics data to brainstorm ideas
- Why Content Upgrades + Leadboxes rock my world
- How easy it is to put the ideas into action
- Why getting more leads won’t mean more sales
- The importance of follow through
- The exact tools I use to get it all done
First step: Google Analytics
This one is so easy that it hurts. Simply log in to your Google Analytics account and go to the content report. Look at the top 10 pages driving traffic to your website, and then look at the page value for them.
Don't have page value? Then make sure you have goals set up. Don't know what a goal is? Then you must take my course.
What do you see in this report? If you are you like me, you will find that there are pages on your website that get a ton of traffic, and yet generate a paltry page value. That's embarrassing!
While I still have that problem, as you can see below, I have one page that is generating 700% more value than average!
How the heck does that happen, and why isn't it happening on every page?
Second step: Content Upgrade
Answering our rhetorical question above, the reason why one page gets outsized value over the others is because I have put a content upgrade in place.
What the heck is a content upgrade? In my case, it's a little red button that I generated with LeadPages.
When you click on that little red button, a box pops up on your screen that gives you the opportunity to download the template mentioned in this article… for free.
All that is required is your name and email address.
This is a simple exchange: an email address for a PowerPoint template that will make your monthly reports amazing.
People are giving me their email addresses in droves!
Third step: LeadPages and Leadboxes
How do you get that button on your website? How do you email someone a PowerPoint when they give their email address?
Wizardry? Witchcraft? Harry Potter?
Heck if I know, it just works with LeadPages.
Seriously, check out these results. 55% of people who see that form above give me their email address.
When they give their email address, LeadPages emails them with the PPT file. I don't have to lift a finger, and if the visitor wants to access the template, they know their email address needs to be valid.
LeadPages also handles the process of opting this visitor into my email platform. All I need to do is configure an integration between platforms, and LeadPages will subscribe visitors to a specific list. We can even customize the fields as needed.
This one process from one web page is seamlessly putting an extra 5-10 email addresses into my account each day.
And in our next video I am going to show you how to do this for your own site.
Read our full LeadPages Review here.
Fourth step: Email follow up sequence through Active Campaign (my email software)
This is the step that most people avoid, and it makes me mad.
Why does it make me mad? Because I also avoided doing this for years, and I left money on the table.
It makes me so mad that I want to buy a fancy white glove. Then I want to invent a time machine and go back to 5 years ago and find me sitting at my computer.
It makes me so mad that I want to take off the white glove that I bought and slap Jeff from the past across the face.
Ok, I am not that mad, and 5 years ago I didn't even have a blog. And LeadPages didn't exist then. But you get the point. It is stupid to not have a follow up sequence.
Because we are old and wise, we have developed an email follow up sequence, and it looks something like this.
In the words of many US presidential candidates, this is YUGE!
Think about this crazy progression. We started out just happy we got search traffic.
Then we decided to turn search traffic into leads.
Then we used email marketing to turn those leads into customers.
All of these activities combined is how we generate profit.
Fifth step: Profit
I am not one of those bloggers who likes to brag about how much money that I make from my online businesses. It's a lot more than $0, but not as much as I used to make in my full time job (though that is the aspiration).
But what I will tell you is that when you have an online business/blog, the number of tools that you are pitched is staggering. We are talking about hundreds of tools that claim to be “vital” to growing your business. It is easy to spend $10,000 a year in tools/software/web hosts for a small business. When you add it all up, I spent over $10,000 in tools, equipment and software for my online businesses in 2015.
For 2016, I am taking a little different approach. Each tool needs to carry its weight, or it is out of the mix. This means that email marketing software is only valuable if I send emails. LeadPages is only useful if I generate leads.
What I can tell you is this: I have already turned a profit on my investment in LeadPages and Active Campaign in 2016. Multiple times over, actually. LeadPages has been profitable almost instantly as the homepage to Analytics Course. Active Campaign has been profitable as my follow up sequence to the leads I generate.
A big part of that profit stream is following the process that I outline above.
But I will give you a warning – if you don't have an email follow up sequence, you might as well go to the bank and withdraw $10,000.
Use $5 of that to go to the store and buy lighter fluid and matches.
Then light the other $9,995 on fire.
Want it to be more dramatic? Take out the $10k in $1 bills.
What did we learn today?
Google Analytics is an idea machine
Each time you log into Google Analytics, you should be able to generate 10 ideas for how you can improve your site. Sure, it is going to be a lot of work. But that work can pay off in so many ways, right?
If you are short on ideas for how you can approach content moving forward, log in to Google Analytics right away!
If you think that Google Analytics is a monster, then enroll in my course!
LeadPages is vital for email capture
Now that you have a boatload of ideas from your Google Analytics, its time to sweeten the deal. Use LeadPages to advertise your product and LeadBoxes for lead magnets. Watch your list grow exponentially, conversion rates soar, and see your email purchase rates increase tenfold.
Email capture needs nurturing
None of the two above items matter if you don't nurture the leads you capture. Build out an email sequence for the leads you capture. Segment them based on interests, help them relieve their frustrations, and inspire them to take the next step with your solution.
We could do a video series purely about email autoresponder sequences. Maybe I will do that some day, but the truth is I am still learning.
I hope that you find this video interesting, and join me for the entire series as we learn together.
Next week: Developing and deploying a content upgrade
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