Featured Guest Post by Marty Dickinson

Not too many events are as exciting to a business owner than to login to email and see a slew of notifications like “Payment Received” when orders have been made by customers.

For me, “Payment Received” are my 2 favorite words in business.

The question all of us should be asking is, “How can we get more emails like that?!”

The answer can be summed up in two words: CREATE URGENCY.

Take a look at this screenshot I made today to show you my flow of orders for the past week. Notice how sales trickled in for the first part of the week and then several orders in one day.

The difference? On Friday morning, I sent a promotion to my clients and some opt-ins. I attempted to convince them to buy today (Friday) because on Monday, the item will disappear, no longer available for purchase.

Where the real money happens online is by creating URGENCY.

Did you hear of the woman in California who sprayed pepper spray into the eyes of other shoppers as they all raced to the table to get the recently released X-Box game? My 13yo was telling me stores were selling out of this game in under 10 minutes all over the country! on Black Friday Why? Well, I’m sure the game is wonderful, but the truth of it is that everyone knew the game would sell out in under 10 minutes and supply would be short.

They feared if they didn’t get their copy now at the price it was being offered for, they never would.

Whether you have a 15,000 product store or just finished your first ebook, you need to create urgency to sell your products to their fullest potential.

So, exactly how do you create urgency? I use these 5 steps:

1. Find Something Super Sexy to Create or an Existing Product to Exploit – Out of your 15,000 product store, which products are the real “sexy” ones? Or, if you sell info products, what is that one product that’s on everyone’s minds?

Of course, I don’t mean sexy in its literal term, unless maybe your store is full of lingerie items for sale. Sexy, as it applies to products, is defined by what people are paying attention to right now.

Why has Herman Cain’s 13-year affair and sexual harrassment allegations been the dominating subject of every news station for the past month?

Because it’s sexy. No matter how much you and I can’t stand to hear anymore, we don’t change the channel do we? Why? Because we’re roped in. It’s a sexy topic.

For me, my best selling products have always been information. Website traffic generation information products to be specific. My best selling emanaul has always been Getting Brutal with Google, which I release for sale only 3 or 4 times per year.

Books, membership sites, silver-bullet schemes and workshops on this topic have been inundating the Internet for years. How could any product I come up with related to Google possibly compete? The answer is that I always have to find something even more sexy than the topic itself.

Instead of just coming up with “how to get your website on top of Google” which would bring a ho-hum response and a big yawn by my audience, last week I came up with something new that no one has done before. I called it “5 Seconds to #1 – Speed SEO Basics for WordPress Mini-Manual.”

I mean, who wouldn’t want to be able to get a new page on their website to show up in the #1 search position on Google…in 5 seconds?!

Of course, part of the allure of this document would require that I could actually get a new post on my website on top of a Google search result within 5 seconds. But it happened–twice! Actually, I had been working toward this for the past two months. So, the research was over and, with the recent change Google made to their algorithm a few weeks ago, it was perfect timing for the next step.

2. Test Sell – About two weeks ago, I promoted the product to a small portion of my client list just to make sure it would be a potential seller.

In my email promotion, I made it clear that the product was not written yet. And, actually, the title was “8 Minutes to #1″ so I actually improved the process of the product in two weeks to be about getting onto #1 in 5 seconds! I made something sexy even sexier!

3. Make it Fast – I couldn’t wait to go through some heavy product creation process over the next few months. There was no time to even pay an editor! All of the publishing pros are cringing in disgust right now

More important than perfection in writing was the timliness of the product. I discovered something that would be sexy to my followers now and I made a product about it in one sitting in a single Saturday after Thanksgiving. That means it would be current and hot; the perfect recipe for success. When you find something sexy to sell, you have to be able to make it and feature it very quickly; not always within the same day, mind
you, but don’t wait too long to have the perfect product either.

4. Commit to a Closing – I made a blog post on Friday to kick off my big sale day telling the story about how I came across the process of getting a post on Google in 5 seconds and revealed that I worked on creating the document all day Saturday after Thanksgiving. Very personal. Very calculated. Although, a very laid back approach actually in the way I wrote the content for the product.

By the time you read this, my top Google search position promotion will probably already be closed, but you’re welcome to see the blog post on my main HereNextYear website.

The email that I sent to my carefully segmented list gave readers until Monday to buy at a very reduced rate of just $7 and then the Order Now button would be removed from the page. I also mentioned the next time they would see the “5 Seconds to #1″ product would be when it’s added to my next release of Getting Brutal with Google, traditionally a $79 item.

The point is that you MUST pick a day that the offer will expire. And it has to end on the day you say it will expire.

5. Segment and Send – One of the great features of Premium Web Cart is the ability to segment your email lists through a variety of ways, As a result, you can coordinate multiple email campaigns at the same time and automate pretty much everything.

Say, for example, that you want to sell a 6-week training program for $350. Well, you might promote that course to your opt-in email list but after a person buys you wouldn’t want to send them subsequent promotions to buy that same training course, would you? Of course not.

You would want that new customer’s email address to be automatically moved to a different list where they would be spared from the additional promotions.

Likewise, you might want to promote an upsell to someone who has just made a purchase. That promotion wouldn’t be fitting for the opt-in group.

My point is that creating urgency is partly an administration process. You need to have a plan mapped out for which people will receive what
promotions and in what sequence.

People are always asking me about how they can increase their sales. My response is always to create urgency. What techniques have you used to create urgency in your own online selling process? Let’s help each other sell more this holiday season by getting some discussion going.

Featured Guest Post by Marty Dickinson 

As you know from my first guest post on the Premium Web Cart blog last week, I’ve been working with the setup of the system as a
1st-timer and new customer, converting all of my products and services to transact exclusively through PWC.

I’ve already had a few clients pull the trigger and sign-up with PWC at my suggestion. So, I’ve been helping them along the way as well, really getting a good feel for the system.

Two of those clients have never had active product sales capability on their websites before. So, we’ve been talking a lot about pricing and online sales strategy to get them going.

One of the things I mentioned about pricing products really caught them off guard and I thought I’d share it with you.

Did you know that any information product you sell on the Internet needs to be worth 15 times (or more) whatever you’re charging?

It sure is a true statement and here’s why.

When pricing items in the 1998-2000 years, we would calculate a starting price and multiply X 5 to arrive at the product’s true value. The product sold well because we sold its “value” and not the price.

We came about that number of 5 through testing. If we attempted to sell a product for $50 and then gave all the reasons it was worth $50, we sold next to nothing.

If we added a bonus to increase the value or simply promoted the real value of the product, sales increased.

Pretty simple, but it made sense. After all, people never want to buy things that are only worth what the selling price is. They always want more. They always want the better deal…the special deal.

You see it all the time on television with the “But wait! There’s more!” informercials.

The web is even more bonus driven than t.v. because people are so skeptical about, well, everything! Add-in the fact that we’re still in this crazy economic climate, and it begins to make sense why you have to give way more in value today than 10 years ago to sell to your fullest potential online.

In the year 2000, if we were to attempt to sell a $20 ebook, it darn well had to be worth $100. If the item was to have a price tag of $97, the value needed to exceed $500 or even more for optimum sales potential.

I attend or speak at several workshops, association meetings or conferences every year, so I’m pretty hip on what people are charging and producing. Since I too produce and sell online products through a variety of websites, I make it a point to study what others are selling and how they’re packaging their offers.

The most recent Internet marketing conference I attended had the average sales pitch value of $50,000 to $70,000 and a sales price of $1,500 to $2,500.

That’s 30 times the “perceived value” of the offer!

Notice how when the price goes up, the percentage of perceived value must increase as well.

Here are a few more examples:

You can buy the average ebook on Kindle for under $2, where the same book sells in hardcopy in a bookstore for $19.95.

The average membership website that used to charge $50-$100 per month or more has cut its charges to under $15/month to keep members longer.

The last (credible) $5,000 services package I found online had more than $15,000 in value for the BONUSES alone!

Here’s My Point:

If you’ve seen a reduction in sales over the past year or two or you’re just not getting any sales at all, the first thing you need to really take a cold hard and honest look at is the value of your offer in comparison to the price you are charging.

If your product is brand new, have a new product launch. If your existing product is just stagnant and not going anywhere, give it a quick facelift and re-launch it.

Here are 5 steps I use myself for every product launch. Take ‘em or leave ‘em. I’m not guaranteeing any silver bullets here or get rich quick schemes. These are just 5 important keys that have helped me sell product over the web for the past 16 years.

1. Reduce Your Price for Launch – Premium Web Cart has a great feature for adding a sale price for a product and then assigning a time frame to apply a discount. See the image below of one of my products inside the PWC admin area:

This date range can be whatever you want; a week, a month, or a single day.

What also helps is that the “real” price displays on the cart pages so that the buyers can be reminded of exactly how much of a great deal they’re really getting. They then can easily associate that discount with your real product value.

2. Accumulate Testimonials Like Crazy – Make contact with every buyer you can to get their opinion of their product. Were the steps easy to follow? Were you inspired to take action? What results did you get? Can I use what you just said to help tell others about the product?

I know this requires a bit of extra work on your part, but getting a flood of testimonials is worth it and will help to sell your product even more when the price goes up. And, if this is a “real business” for you, doing a bit more extra work won’t scare you off.

3. Be Firm with Your Reduced Price Timeframe – If you don’t stick to your timeframe, or have a darn good reason for extending it, you must allow that increase in price to happen on-time. Otherwise, people will never believe your buy-by deadlines in the future.

You’ve probably seen the emails, “Oops! Sorry, Sent the wrong link yesterday so we’ve extended our special sale through the end of next Friday.”

C’mon, I’m sure you don’t fall for that and I don’t either. Stick to your deadlines or have a much better reason than “oops” to extend it.

4. Add a Bonus to Complement Your Price Increase – After you’ve talked to or emailed your buyers, you will get tons of feedback. Most will be positive, some will be helpful criticism to make a better product.

Use that feedback to quickly create a few more sub-products to add to your bonus package. Get an expert or two on the phone and record the phone conversation. Find a friend with a complementary product or a white paper or free report and ask if you can use it as a bonus.

There are so many ways to create and/or get bonuses of great value, I’ll have to save that topic for another blog post! NEVER sell anything online without offering a bonus; well, unless you are content with mediocre sales of course.

5. Be Confident in What You’re Offering – This is sometimes the hardest part of all. If you want your sales to increase, you must be totally comfortable with what you are offering and how much you’re charging.

Whatever you are selling or thinking about rolling out next week to the masses, turn off your cell phone, stop replying to emails for a few hours straight. Head out to a quiet location where you can clearly evaluate your package offer. If you’ve written a book, read it again for the first time. If you’ve made a series of MP3 audios, listen to them as if you’ve just downloaded them to your iPod. If videos, watch them as if you yourself are in desparate need of the contents to help turn your life around.

Inspire yourself that you have a product with a message that is so good you’re practically letting down society if you can’t convince them to buy it! This passion will fuel you for all the other components of Internet marketing required to fill your bank account.

If you are truly confident in your own product, it’s ready to sell. Launch it!

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Marty Dickinson is the co-author of Web Marketing All-in-One for Dummies and has been a full-time Internet marketer since 1996. He and his team of 7 at HereNextYear.com provide WordPress website services as well as online sales consulting to authors, speakers and business owners around the U.S. Connect with Marty on Google+ or facebook page.