Rogers Online Business Management for the Agriculture Community

Posts Tagged ‘Information Products’

Idyllic days in the sunshine. Ruby liquid in sparkling glasses. Merry picnickers and live music.

It’s these moments – drinking your wines and visiting your vineyards – that your customers remember. But even the best memories can fade.

Email marketing can remind your customers what they’re missing. It can invite your visitors back. It can inspire your fans to go buy that favorite bottle again.

Once you build up a sold list of subscribers, you’ll need some creative ideas to spark your customers’ memories and bring them back for more.

Here are some ideas:

Pairings and Recipes

• If your chardonnay sparkles with scallops, let your customers know. Pair your wines with complementary dishes and share the recipes.
• If your Burgundy is excellent in beef stew, share that, too. Original recipes for dishes cooked with your wines are even more valuable. If you have an online store, make sure to link up the wines.

Seasonal Gifts

• People are always searching for unique gifts. Show them what you have to offer, whether it’s festively wrapped wines for the holidays, wine and chocolate sets for Valentine’s Day or picnic baskets for Mothers’ Day.

Fun Facts

• Identify wine myths vs. facts. Quote some trivia your readers will want to quote themselves. Feature a rotating glossary fo wine-making terms.
• Your customers may not know why racking wine does not mean putting bottles into wine racks. Tell them why. Give them more than just discounts – give them an education. With insider information, they’ll feel good about themselves and grateful to you.

New Merchandise

• Giddy tasters and frequent visitors alike bring home the winery experience with glass charms, drunken olives and other goodies. If you add a new must-have item, email your list – they’ll be sure to keep an eye out for it next time they visit.

Video Footage

• Videos show off your winery even when your doors are closed. They also let you share more content than the typical email can hold.
• Use video for educational demonstrations, “meet our team” introductions and sweeping panoramas of your estate that call visitors back. Post them to YouTube and link to them with clickable screenshots in your emails.

New Releases

• Stir up some excitement! Introduce new vintages with fanfare. Tell your subscribers where they can find the new wine, and let them know that you can’t wait for their reaction!

Special Discounts

• As faithful readers of your content and proclaimed fans of your winery, your subscribers might deserve a little extra once in awhile. Reward subscribers (and keep them coming in) with email-exclusive discounts and offers.

Events

• Live music performances, tastings, tours of your production area, grape stomping festivals, wine education classes with guest speakers – if you host these, get the word out!
• Send an invitation to your subscribers early enough for them to plan ahead, but not so early that they forget!

Rate Your Wines

• Your wines may wind regional awards, but aside from recognizing this as a maker of quality, customers may not have much reaction. Instead of telling them someone else’s opinion, ask theirs.
• Have visitors to your tasking room rate your wines. Periodically invite your readers to send rating to your “from” address. Announce the winners in an email that subscribers will check to see – Did their favorite win?

Wine Classes

• If you offer wine education classes on-site, make sure to invite your local subscribers (try segmenting by location). Summarize the best points from the class afterward so the rest of your list can benefit as well.

Images

• Don’t forget pictures! Ambiance is an important part of the wine lifestyle, so extend yours to your newsletter.
• Show the grapes being crushed, the wine being bottled. Feature your winemakers, bartenders and grape pickers – give your readers faces to recognize when they visit.

***Don’t forget to watch out for minors! Make age a required field on your sign-up form. Marketing to those under-age could result in fines.

As a winery, what content do you send your subscribers? Do they respond? Do they mention your messages when they visit?

These ideas can easily translate to other businesses. Hotels and restaurants can use images for ambiance. Fitness bloggers can highlight fun facts. Galleries can announce new shows.

What kinds of content can you create from these ideas?

Be sure to take a look at our service packages as we can help you with all your marketing ideas, including shooting the video for your online ad and submitting it to the search engines to get you in the top ten ranking!

Source: AWeber Auto Responder Service

Discounted products attract tons of traffic. Take one of your best selling products and slash the price as low as you can and still make a small profit.

Your smaller profit will be offset with a larger volume of sales. Even if you don’t make a lot of money on this one off promotion, you introduce more people to your products and services and can contact them later to make more profitable sales.

Try making a quick video about one of your products and tell them at the end of the video that if they mention your video by name they will receive a discount. And you will receive higher search engine rankings with your video so it’s a win-win situation!

You may be asking yourself how do you keep your reader engaged in your ebook after you spent all that time writing it?

Well often times if you include some anecdotes, testimonials, little stories, photos, graphs, advice, and maybe some tips, you will keep the reader turning the pages. Include some sidebars which are useful for quick, accessible information, and they help break up the density of the page as well.

Make sure you write with a casual, conversational tone rather than a formal tone such as textbook diction. Reader’s respond to the feeling that you are having a conversation with them. Try to break up the length of structure of your sentences so you don’t hypnotize your readers into sleep. Sentences that are all the same length and structure tend to be a good aid for insomnia!

Just remember that good writing takes practice. Lots and lots of practice. Make a schedule to write at least a page a day. Read books and magazines about the process of writing, and jot down tips that jump out at you. The art of writing is a lifetime process; the more you write (and read), the better your writing will become. And the better your writing becomes, the bigger your sales figures.

If you feel that you just can’t seem to come up with enough information to write an actual Ebook on a subject for your Information Product that you want to sell then why not write a Workbook instead.

Workbooks are a great thing to do for your marketing because you can help people by walking them through those decisions that they need to make. Putting your expertise and working formula in a workbook format would be great for your customers who may not be able to afford you coaching them one on one, or who may not be able to dedicate a junk of time to learning a new method. The workbook would allow them to work at their own pace.

The key is to help more people in the least amount of time whether it’s with case studies, doing workbooks where you write them out once and sell them time and again or group/single coaching as well.

How long should an ebook be? What about an audio recording?

Many people have been asking me the above questions. These actually are very common questions and I always respond in the same way. There is no magical formula that determines how long an ebook or other information products should be. Sure you might hear something like a special report would be about 50 pages, and an ebook about 100 pages. I really don’t know how anyone can come to that determination.

Your ebook, handbook or other product only needs to be as long as it needs to be to fulfull your promise in your marketing message. If you are offering step-by-step instructions on how to maintain a certain piece of equipment on your farm then you just need to provide the instructions, maybe some photos or a video and that’s it. You needn’t talk about the history of the machine and talk about other manufacturers, unless you’re making those a bonus offer on your sales letter. All you have to do is give them the information that you promised them.

When I purchase products related to my business, I don’t like the long books if I’m only looking for a method on how to do something. I’m not a beginner and don’t necessarily need a step-by-step guide. But if the information product covers a subject that I’m not familiar with, then I do like a more in-depth ebook that tells me everything.

You may decide to write a big ebook that tells you everything, or you may decide to do a 10 minute video showing step by step. These are always good to help someone who is brand new. But again, it’s whatever you need to do to fulfill your marketing message.

I think people worry about how long the ebook or other information products should be because they think that people won’t want to pay for the information if it’s not long enough. But realize that people are lazy…if you can show them in a very quick way how to perform a seemingly complicated task in 10 pages, that can be a great selling point.

In order to outsell your competition your marketing needs to blow them away.

Create a hook, market your product in a different way than your competitors. Find out what the hot topics are in your market. What complaints do they have and how can you offer them a solution.

For example, if you’re going to offer a webinar on a new method you discovered for fertilizing your grape crop that saved you money, even though you are not selling a physical product, your hook should convey that you’re going to help them save time and make more money with a better product on an ongoing basis.

You need to be creative in how you market this. Let them know that you may not have a degree in this area but that you learned from trial and error on your own farm.

People want to know that you share their pain and frustration.  So by you letting them know that you are a real honest to goodness farmer just like them then they will automatically share a bond with you and will be interested in your informational product.

Everyone wants to have a lot of productive affiliates, but you need to realize that accomplishing this takes a lot of knocking on doors, getting to know people and a large amount of work. That doesn’t mean it’s not possible, but sometimes people have been lead to believe it’s easy. Sure, once you get the affiliates to say yes to promote your product the money comes in more easily, but you need to get them to say yes first.

You can contact website owners by emailing them or phoning them. Offer to do something for them first. Ask them if you can share their resource with your subscribers or if you can promote their product. Once you’ve helped them, they’re more likely to help you back.

You also need to get to know people in your target market. If you’re going to create a product start getting to know other website and list owners. Someone who knows and likes you is much more likely to promote your product when it’s ready.

Here are a few tips on contacting people:

• Always give a full review copy of your product
• Make your contact personal and show that you know about what they’re doing online and comment on some specific projects.
• Offer a larger commission than your competitors and also larger than you do through your regular affiliate program
• Show them some of your sales results if you’ve already started selling your product

Two of the most important things to keep in mind when contacting people are:

1. Don’t take things personally.
2. Make sure when you contact people they understand there is no obligation if they agree to check out your product. There’s nothing worse than burning bridges by harassing people to promote your product. Even if they don’t promote it at this time, keep the doors open to have this product promoted later or for some possible co-projects. Good affiliates don’t have the time or resources to promote everything that comes their way. Sometimes, the timing isn’t right or the products isn’t quite right for their target audience even though they liked it. Do send them a follow up email but don’t harass them.

I have to share my experience about an email I received from someone who wants to share website links. I know this is a little off the subject about affiliate partners but it still applies here as well.

Here is the email I received. I have had no previous connection to this person and no knowledge of what email she is referring to:

Hello,
Sorry to bother you again. My name is (removed); I contacted you some time ago on the possible partnership issue.
In two words, I searched for the websites related to my website topic, and found your site really attractive and content-rich. I think we could benefit from link exchange, as my website (removed) has much in common with yours.
I will be glad to link to your site in return to you linking back to mine. Please let me know if you feel interested in the possible partnership. You can contact me at (removed).

Best regards,
(removed)

So I’m a little taken aback for the following reasons:

1. The email was titled “Partnership Issues.” Using a very strong word like “issues” is not good! And I didn’t know there could be issues with someone I don’t have a partnership to begin with. Now if she would have used the word “request” I might consider exchanging links.
2. If she had really searched for websites related to her topic and took the time to really read my website she would have addressed me by my name and not a generic “hello.”
3. She says that she thinks we could benefit by this link exchange because we share similar content. Ok–but I share similar content with thousands of other websites as well. She should be telling me how this partnership would differ from any other link exchange I might consider, as well as tell me a little bit about herself and her business.

By not doing these simple things above, I was not interested in a partnership. I was annoyed that she did not take into consideration how precious my time is during the day. Oh I’m not saying I don’t appreciate an email offer for link exchange, what I’m annoyed about is that I would now have to take the time to investigate her and her business.  I would then have to email her back and ask her how she planned on promoting my business and then wait for yet another response back from her. Too much time wasted!!!!

Her email should have covered any possible questions I may have about this partnership but it gave me nothing. I still don’t know anymore about this person then I did before she emailed me.

So my point for sharing this with you is make sure you are polite; check that you are not using words that could be taken in a different meaning by the reader; and be sure to answer any anticipated questions your reader may have about you, your company, and what the benefits are for them.

I have been receiving a lot of questions about how can you research a subject for your Ebook before you spend a bunch of time writing something that no one may be interested in.

The fact is that you want to tap into people’s greatest desires. People like to make money, save time and are passionate. Your goal with your Ebook is to help people pursue their goals.

One of the easiest ways to do your research is with your own readers. If you are already doing business online and have a website and a mailing list, you have your very own research center. Get to know your readers and what they want…and then sell it to them. Ask them questions and really get to know them and how they respond to different mailings and bits of information you give them.

It is so much easier selling to someone who is already a customer then to go out and look for other customers. That is why I limit my products to my main market. I already have a decent list of customers, why would I go create an information product on something completely different when it would be just that much harder to sell to them?

But if you don’t have a list or a website with much traffic, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t start creating information products. We all had to start somewhere so if you’re just getting started there are plenty of research tools available.

Tools:

Google Suggest: http://labs.google.com/suggestfaq.html
 - As you type into the search box, Google Suggest guesses what you’re typing and offers suggestions in real time. Google Suggest uses data about the overall popularity of various searches to help rank the refinements it offers. Just write down the suggestions that come up and then later enter them into a spreadsheet to keep track of them.

Google Zeitgeist: http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeitgeist/index.html
 - Several tools that give insight into global, regional, past and present search trends. These tools are available for you to play with,  explore, and learn from. Use them for everything from business research to trivia answers.

After you’ve done some keyword research, you should:

1. Look for other products on the same topic. If there is no other information product or book on the same topic, don’t get discouraged. Usually this would mean that the idea may not be profitable but in our case the agriculture industry has been untouched by this new way of marketing. Think of how you can blow your competition right out of the water by creating information products in this way.
2. Promote similar products as an affiliate. Sign up for the affiliate programs for these type of products and sell them on your website, blog, or through a Google Adwords campaign.

I really want to encourage you not to be afraid of this new way of marketing. The agriculture industry needs to look for ways to make things better than what has been out there. You need to make yourself stand apart from the rest of the crowd…differentiate yourself from the competition and outsell them!!!

The most frustrating call I receive from a potential client is when they say they have this great product that they want to sell on the Internet. After asking them a few basic questions, it becomes clear that they are trying to enter markets where they think there is massive profit potential, but they know little about the subject.

What they don’t realize is that it’s going to take them more money to get things going. They will probably need to hire writers and work with other experts just to make it look like they themselves know what their talking about.

I personally have fired clients who wanted to market themselves as an expert with a product they knew nothing about. Why? Well for one I don’t want my name to be associated with someone who lacks honesty and credibility. I see them as misleading the public. They are lying about their background, their knowledge, and about the product.

If you are going to claim to be an expert in something you must be able to share your experiences and opinions. For example, back in January my house flooded. After six months of a tug of war game with the insurance adjuster, my house will be under construction in about three more weeks. Now after going through this process I know a lot more about insurances, and adjustors, then I did before the flood happened. But I would never consider myself an expert in this area because I have no other experience, nor any background in this field. Granted I do have car insurance, medical insurance, and of course my house insurance, but I can not say I’m an expert on insurance. 

Sure you can always work with writers and other experts in the market you are trying to enter to develop your information products. They can fill in the gaps where your knowledge may be lacking. However I will say that people who hire writers to write ebooks don’t necessarily have that uniqueness unless they go in and add some of themselves to the product.

You also have to keep in mind how will you answer any questions that are thrown your way. Say you decide to give a webinar on a particular product that you market but you have absolutely no experience in using this product. During the webinar, an attendee says that they have been using the product for some time now but seem to always have trouble in one particular area. When they pose the question to you as to how do you handle this particular situation, what are you going to tell them? You now have to answer them with your experiences. If you decide to opt out the easy way and tell them to email you with their question after the webinar you just lost all credibility to the other attendees in the webinar. People want answers now. All this does is create a fast majority of the attendees saying, “Can you email me the answer too!” They don’t want to have to wait for you to answer if you claim you’ve been using the product, nor should they have to wait.

Don’t underestimate the intelligence of your market. They will sooner or later catch onto you and your reputation will be ruined.

Do you think you are an expert? In every day life what someone considers an expert may be different to different people. If you can share your experiences and opinions, you can become an expert and gain a following. The important thing is that you help people.

If people can learn from your advice, experiences and from your opinion…you are an expert to them. And that’s what makes you unique and helps you stand apart from the crowd even more.