Internet Marketing Strategy – Minimal Marketing Method

𝗔 𝗠𝗶𝗻𝗶𝗺𝗮𝗹 𝗦𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗙𝘂𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗹 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗯𝗲 𝗮 𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝘀𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗳𝘂𝗹 𝘀𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗳𝘂𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗹
You’re probably thinking that sounds too good to be true.
Well, in some ways you’d be right. The success comes not just from the funnel but in the execution of it.

What you see above represents my internet marketing strategy – Minimal Marketing Method.

Forget about all the flashy multi upsells and downsells and convoluted funnels.

You don’t need them!

Simple is good, because you spend your time refining and refining a few basic parameters.

This works for affiliate offers and for your own products.

If you’re looking for something that will make you a million dollars a year you won’t find it here.

But if you’re looking for something that will make you $1000 upwards per month, this works.

Yes, you don’t need anything else.

A target of $1000 per month is $250 a week. That could be 5 x $50 or 3 x $97 to achieve this.

Do you think this is something you could do?

If you focus on implementing this internet marketing strategy, you can achieve it.

You will come across many other examples of this type of system. Most of them will be much more complicated than this.

Please resist the urge to add bits and pieces to this internet marketing strategy.

This will only complicate the issue and more confuse than help your visitor.

What Do You Need To Make This Work?

The simpler the method you use, the less “kit” you require.

The internet marketing world is full of beautifully crafted sales pages selling “shiny objects”.

These offer solutions to problems you were unaware that you had.

Beware, Beware, Beware. Very few of these enormously tempting products will do little other than suck money out of your pockets.

Some may assist in your internet marketing strategy later on, but you don’t need them at present.

To start with all you really need is three tools:

1. Wishloop: To collect email addresses from your subscribers. I use Wishloop for this purpose as it expands as you do.
2. Active Campaign: To send emails out to your subscribers. There are many choices for this but I prefer Active Campaign.  It’s cost effective and grows in complexity as much as you want.
3. Plug’n’paid: To take your payments. There are many more sophisticated softwares than Plug’n’paid. But it is effective for physical and digital products and won’t kill the piggybank.

Your start up costs for the above system should be no more than $80 or thereabouts.

There are other similar products but these are the ones I use and can be confident about.

 

How Do You Get Traffic To Your Blog?

The five main methods I’d suggest are:

• Groups & Forums

Get involved with your potential subscribers. Find the forums and groups for your internet marketing strategy where your audience hangs out.

Read through the posts and identify the problems you can help with.

Try and answer them as fully as you can.

Leave a link to a post or page of yours that relates to the problem or provides more in depth information.

You should get some good traffic from this and with sites such as Reddit or Quora.

The traffic can keep rolling for quite a long time.

Quora is a favourite of mine and very easy to use.

Google highly regards sites such as Reddit and Quora etc

So in addition to the traffic you get from these sites, the backlinks will help your SEO efforts.

• On Page SEO

Some of the most tedious tasks can also be the most rewarding.

“On page SEO” and “Keyword Research” fall into this category for me.

My heart sinks when I see these phrases pop up on my to do list.

After a few days or weeks later that I do however feel that warm glow that comes from rewards for drudgery.

Getting your on page SEO right the first time, while a pain , can reap you dividends in free organic traffic.

It can play a vital role in your internet marketing strategy.

This image shows you the results of an article I posted on a fairly new website with no authority.

After 10 days (it may have been earlier because I didn’t check) it has reached Google page 1 without any promotion or link building.

Yes. It may take an hour to get it right, but compare that with cost of ads to get there AND stay there.

There are free and paid methods to get this right.

Yoast SEO has a free and paid version.

If you prefer a paid version I can recommend WebTextTool.

Both of these tools provide step by step guidance and will help get maximum optimisation for your pages.

This type of service is expensive to maintain due to the ever changing nature of the Google algorithm.

Beware of low cost one time payment products on SEO. They generally only deliver on a short term basis. After all who is going to spend $000s updating a $25 product?

 

 

• Advertising BUT on $1 per day!!

I first came across this method when I grabbed a $1 special offer Blitzmetrics course.

You set your Facebook ad budget at $7 per week and run the ad for 7 days.

After 7 days you check the performance of the ad and if it’s performing well you can scale it up.

If it’s not you ditch it.

Depending on your budget you can run several ads at the same time, each costing you $7 per week.

If you have an ad budget of $30 you can run 4 ads simultaneously for a week.

Then make a comparison on what’s working best.

Your first ads should be used to create awareness of you, your brand, your products, your website etc and NOT trying to sell anything.

As an example, create a 15 second video ad and try and get 10 second views as your target.

If you manage to get 80 x 10 second views, each view has cost you $0.0875 for your $7 budget.

This could be a video ad offering a free course or competition.

You can then show another ad to these 80, designed to increase engagement with them.

Eventually you can run ads to them to encourage sales or subscriptions.

Those of the 80 who have not signed up or made a purchase you can retarget with another ad.

• YouTube

Video is a must in every marketer’s toolbox.

It is by far and away the cheapest and easiest way to gain exposure for your brand or products.

A few years ago you could easily rank your keyword in Google and the search engines .

That is where YouTube is now.

You don’t need to try and game the system.

You simply have to deliver good quality videos, properly optimised and you can rank for your keywords almost overnight.

There are three opportunities to rank your YouTube videos:

1. On YouTube itself. YouTube is now the second most used search engine after Google.
2. In the Google YouTube carousel. You will see this at the top of many Google search pages. It usually comprises a carousel of 8-10 videos.
3. On Google itself. Some Google pages feature videos on page 1.

And it’s all free!!!

 

Unfortunately like Google it needs you to do your keyword research.

Boring and tedious? Yes, it is but the rewards make the effort well worth it.

There are both free and paid tools to make this easier for you.

Two of the free tools I use are Ubersuggests and Keywords Everywhere.

A very useful paid tool is Andy Black’s “Video Keyword Spy”. This identifies the difficulty/ease of ranking for your keywords on both Google and YouTube.

This is one of the single purchase tools I can recommend.

I’ve been using several of Andy’s products over the last few years and know they are well supported.

There are various free and paid video creation software suites available.

• Social Media

This isn’t the place to go into detail about the use of Social Media.

But a successful post on Facebook/ Instagram or Tweet can generate a bucket load of engagement and traffic to your site.

Post shortened versions of your videos or blog posts on your social media sites.

This will encourage readers to see the full article, with in depth answers, on your website.

What Content Do Put On Your Website?

The answer that question is quite straightforward. It is the best content you can create.

When someone visits your site for the first time, how will they judge your site (and by default – you)?

Will it be the flashy visuals? NO

Will it be the offers jumping of the page? NO

Will it be the expensive logo? NO

It will be the quality of your content. Does it answer the questions/problems that have led them to your page?

If you’re offering a short 300 word article, skimming the surface of the problem, do you think the visitor will hang around? Not likely!!

A 1500+ word article offering solutions to your visitor’s problem which then goes on to offer a whole lot more, will do much better.

Now, because you have given this a lot of thought and set up your page correctly a few things are going to happen.

If someone is looking to learn how to make videos and get them ranked, they may search for “How to get videos ranked in YouTube”.

They might then come across your article “Five Things You Need To Know About Ranking Videos In YouTube”.

After they have read through your comprehensive article and had their questions answered, some things you have planned are going to happen:

1. Because you have spent some time mastering Google Tag Manager, you will have loaded pixels for Facebook, Youtube  Ads, Google Ads.

You will have set these with a 30 second delay (to avoid those who don’t stay on the page).

This will start to build up an audience of those who want to know about ranking videos on YouTube.

2. After a delay of your choice, you will present an offer for a free report  (lead magnet) “How To Create A Great YouTube Thumbnail”.

Since you stressed the importance of creating a great thumbnail in your article, many will opt in for the report, starting to build your list of video marketers.

3. Once they have opted in, they will start to receive a series of emails providing piles of great information and videos.

These will explain just how they can improve their Youtube ranking for their videos and how to make sure they stay at the top,  or as near as is possible.

Over a fairly short period of time you will establish yourself as an expert and the first person they turn in this niche.

4. Your subscribers will also receive offers from you for products and services that will help in a variety of video related areas.

The trust you have established will encourage your subscribers to buy from you.

Before you know it you’ve started making sales.

5. Over the next few weeks you will present ads for your free guides/cheat sheets to those who did not opt in .

To do this they will have to complete one of your opt in forms. This takes them to point 3 above.

This is an audience you have created by virtue of the pixels you installed on your article.

6. At this point you will have built up an email list of subscribers, some of whom will have bought from you.

Using your autoresponder you will have separated these into two lists.

One list of subscribers and the other buyers.

Those who remain as subscribers will continue see your special offers and ads via both email and the retargeting you set up earlier.

At this point you start to realise that the time (maybe a few hours) that you put in to make your content the best you could do, really was time well spent.

How Do You Organise Your Email List?

You may think that as soon as you have someone signed up to your list that that’s the end of it.

Far from it, it’s just the beginning.

Segment Your List

The first step you’ll want to make is to segment your subscribers.

To return to the earlier example of ranking YouTube video.

There will be subscribers with a wide range of experience levels in your list.

To communicate effectively with your subscribers, you’ll want to pitch your content at the right level.

There’s nothing more guaranteed to make someone lose interest than pitching beginner level to someone with experience and vice versa.

By the time a subscriber joins your list you should have them tagged at the appropriate level.

It could be beginner: intermediate: experienced.

You can then direct the appropriate level of content to each subscriber.

Confirm Engagement

At this stage you want to confirm that your subscriber has engaged with you.

They have subscribed to your list.

You’ve sent an email with a link to the fantastic guide.

But have they downloaded it?

You need to set up a system/automation to know the answer to this, as your next communication could be a follow up, on the guide content.

Are They Reachable?

By this time you will have a number of subscribers on your list.

They will all be segmented properly. Some will have downloaded your free guide.

However there will be some who have maybe given you incorrect email addresses or just don’t want to get involved.

As your list and your marketing improves you’re going to want to know how effective your marketing is.

How many emails are being opened, what the response rate is etc.

If you have a significant number of “bad” addresses in your list, who never respond, it’s really going to skew your figures.

To resolve this you’ll need to be able to divide your subscribers into the “reachable” and “not reachable”.

This can usually be achieved by a simple automation.

Find out more about email organisation on my blog post Automate Your List Building.

Retargeting

What is retargeting?

Well, you know sometimes when you’ve been looking at a certain item online, and then ads for it seem to keep following you around for a few days afterwards?

That’s retargeting.

It’s important, immensely profitable and you can do it!

How does it work?

Remember how you put Facebook and Google pixels on your pages?

After someone stayed on your page for more than 30 seconds these pixels were triggered and saved in an “audience” in either Facebook or Google/YouTube.

These people may have done nothing else except that, but you now have an audience that you know was interested enough in your product/article to stay on your site and read it.

Going back to $1 per day advertising.

With this you were advertising to a “cold” but possibly interested audience.

You can do this by boosting a Facebook post to an audience you’ve built using Facebook manager.

These will be people who ,say in this case, may be interested in video marketing.

However you are advertising to people who you only “think” might be interested in what you have to offer.

The difference in retargeting is that you KNOW they are interested in what you have to offer and therefore the return on investment (ROI) should be many times greater.

What you are doing with retargeting is giving a little nudge to people who have already shown interest.

Maybe that’s all they need to subscribe to your list.

It reinforces how important is to put your Facebook or/and Google pixels on your pages.

Once a client has bought from you, make sure you remove them from that audience for two reasons.

One it’s a waste of money advertising to them as they have already purchased your product.

Two it will really tick them off being advertised something they’ve already bought.

 

How Do You Complete The Sales Process?

By this stage in your internet marketing strategy your visitor has undertaken a journey with you.

It started with viewing an ad, or a Facebook post which led to your blog.

They liked the content on your blog enough to sign up to your mailing list.

You’ve impressed them with the free report you provided, or the information they gained from your emails.

They decide that they want to buy the product or service you have on offer.

They will then click on to your money page/sales page/ affiliate offer or product review.

These pages will all be different depending on what you are offering and where the subscriber is on the journey.

For example, if the subscriber has received lots of information about your product, he/she is not going to need a big sell.

Your money page may be just a summary of the product features and benefits and a call to action.

On the other hand if your subscriber is coming fresh to the product you may end up having a 3000 word sales page.

What ff it’s an affiliate offer and you don’t control the money page?

Your pre-sell emails concentrate on the problem rather than the solution.

The sales page offers up the solution.

However in all cases keep to the point, minimise any distractions and use as few words as possible.

Not everyone who arrives at your money page will make a purchase.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could follow up on those who decided not to commit to buying?

That’s where you’re ahead of the game, because you’ve placed your Facebook and/or Google pixel on the money page.

So how do you achieve this when you’re selling an affiliate product?

One clever way of doing it is by creating a page “similar” to the offer page with a “Get It Here” or similar button which takes the subscriber to the affiliate page.

Again you’ll be able to create a retargeting list.

 

What Could Possibly Go Wrong With Your Internet Marketing Strategy?

Well, quite a lot of things could go wrong given the random variances in human nature.

But let’s deal with the most common problems:

Cold traffic from ads/Facebook posts not clicking through to your blog?

The two main variables here are your audience and your call to action.

Either or both may not be doing the job.

I suggest try running two ads with different calls to action to the same audience.

Additionally you can change your audience and run the original ad to the new audience.

Once people have arrived at your blog, they proceed no further?

As in the first case there are two variables; your call to action and the free report/guide.

I suggest only changing one variable at a time. So try changing the call to action, run some ads and check you results.

If that doesn’t improve things, go back to the original call to action and change the free report/guide and run some more ads.

People not staying on the page long enough to fire your pixel?

If people are not staying on your blog for the 30 seconds it takes to fire the pixel it can mean one of two things:

1. Your article content does match up with the visitor’s expectations for your ad and/or FB post etc. Adjust your ad to suit.
2. You might need to spice up your writing or content to make it more readable.

Not everyone can write like Lee Child and conjure up a Jack Reacher, but your piece has to lead people on to want to read more.

People not opening your emails?

Normally it’s the subject line of your emails that will decide if they are going to be opened.

So first try and make your subject lines enticing.

Often just posing a question can be sufficient.

Or you might like to try something quirky, or combine the two into a quirky question.

 

Finally…… Keep Checking Your Numbers

You’ll often hear marketers say “the money is in the list”. That is only partly true:

The money is in the engagement with the list

How do you measure your engagement with your list?

It’s not rocket science. All you have to keep checking your numbers.

Check the click through rates on your ads.

Check the comments on your Facebook posts.

Check the reach on your Facebook posts.

Check the opt in rates to your lists.

Check the open rates on your emails.

Check the click through rates from your emails.

In fact if it’s an action, measure it and compare.

Yes, it can be extremely tedious but you will find no more rewarding return on your time.

Over time you’ll be able to predict what your customers and subscribers like, what content to publish, which products will excite them.

That’s what I call a business model.

Internet Marketing Strategy – The Minimal Marketing Method.