The LinkedIn Connections Converter Special Part 2
Hey welcome back!
This is Cain Ndhlovu founder of Sunrise Digital Marketing Agency and creator of this three part free training series for you on The LinkedIn Connections Converter Special Part 1 to 3
Welcome back to Part 2 of The LinkedIn
Connections Converter Special training series. Thank you for the support and
participating in Part 1.
In Part 1 I introduced an amazing
opportunity to become a wealthy and successful entrepreneur by teaching about
Jeff Walker’s product launch formula that is helping thousands of entrepreneurs
around the world to launch new products and services.
It can also help you ! What makes you
think your business will be successful enough for you to buy that house, that
car or make that choice investment when the same business is struggling to take
off the ground ?
You know you can’t just drop a new
product you need to engineer your marketing hence a launch and the online product
launch formula by Jeff Walker is the best in terms of being cost-effective.
The whole idea is that turn your marketing into an event. A good example
of this is Hollywood . They release a trailer a year in advance, and then 6 months
in advance , a month in advance and they send their actors out for talk shows
and suddenly everyone is talking about the movie before it even come out.
With the product launch formula we are taking that power of the pre
launch, the power of the buzz campaign and we are bringing it into all kinds of
businesses especially those within the micro, small to medium category.
I taught you that to do this you must use three critical tools as
follows;
1. Stories
2. Sequences
3. Mental Triggers
In Part 1 we went through the detail pertaining these three. In Part 2 we
are not going to repeat the same because now we are going to go a step further
and I will teach you how to implement the product launch formula.
Part 1
was about the product launch formula theory and Part 2 is about the product
launch formula practice. The practice is simple because you will learn how to
implement the product launch formula using common yet powerful digital tools.
But before
I get started with Part 2 let me tell you the story behind how I got involved
in this. How can you as well ?
You know I was just a newcomer in the real estate
industry and I had just left high
school. On one occasion
I was fired and on another my boss told me “maybe selling real estate isn’t for
you”.
I had no relevant experience at all because I was just a high school leaver who only knew poem writing. I was also alone. The people who were supposed to act as my mentors could not help. They also were struggling to make ends meet. It was a dog eat dog kind of a situation.
It all started when I wrote an article titled,
“ Financial
consequences of purchasing property from a seriously-ill seller and other
purchases to avoid ”.
This property article resonated with a
Harare lady.
She had just purchased a Msasa house
from a seriously-ill seller and there was an outstanding balance. After reading
the post she decided to clear this balance by selling another property - a
piece of land in Madokero . I was the real estate agent she commissioned to do
the new sale on her behalf.
This highly motivated me because I took
it as a vote of confidence confirming
how my new social media based marketing methods worked.
Secondly,
the internet and social media helped me secure customers easily. On social media - LinkedIn, Facebook,
Whatsapp, Twitter you have access to millions by the click of a button. To this
end I invented a social prospecting technic called script prospecting.
Apart from real estate I have also gotten results in
entrepreneurship. Script prospecting helped me acquire email addresses of
prospective customers.
Finally, on the internet I have met world class mentors on the social
media marketing topic thereby taking my knowledge of digital marketing to the
next level.
A mentor is a person who has attained success in a particular area and
from whom you can learn. I prefer learning from a mentor than a college
lecturer because the former rises and fall with results.
He is like a football coach -your Alex Ferguson, Jose Morinho, Pep
Guardiola . I have never seen teachers being fired for poor O Level results but
I always hear about coaches being fired everyday for poor results on the pitch.
In the online marketing space one such mentor is an internet millionaire
called Jeff Walker. Jeff shares his ideas
that made him a millionaire in his book titled Launch a New York Times best seller. His product launch formula
has been successfully duplicated by entrepreneurs around the world helping them
also to break into the market with new products.
Jeff Walker was a stay-at-home dad who had failed in the corporate world
in the mid 90s. To improve his poor financial situation he decided to get
started by enrolling in grad school. But since it was after five years being out
of the work force he wanted to first boost his resume in order to be accepted. To do this he started
an online newsletter that offered free tips about the stock market.
This did it and he secured a place at grad school.
A week before his first class he decided to monetize his newsletter and
he tried to pitch his idea through email. Much to his surprise it worked and
people sent him physical checks for a successful launch of $1, 650. That day, his life changed forever as
the entrepreneurial spark became real.
Instantly, he
thought, “If I can do it once, I can
do it again… and better.”
On the first day of
grad school, he decided to drop out, and the rest is history. He went on to do
bigger launches from $6,000 to $8,000 to $14,000 and 18 months later, a $34,000
launch. Then, a few short years later, he had his first six-figure launch in
2000 - which was unheard of in those times.
He
has been gracious enough to share the outline of his Product Launch Formula.
The Product
Launch Formula
As noted at the outset the whole idea is that turn your marketing into
an event. A good example of this is Hollywood . They release a trailer a year
in advance, and then 6 months in advance , a month in advance and they sent
their actors out for talk shows and suddenly everyone is talking about the
movie before it even come out.
With the product launch formula we are taking that power of the pre
launch, the power of the buzz campaign and we are bringing it into all kinds of
businesses especially those within the micro, small to medium category.
To do this there are three critical tools you must therefore, use as
follows;
1. Stories
2. Sequences
3. Mental Triggers
But the million dollar question now is “ How do you implement this
product launch formula ?” Answering this question is the aim of this second
presentation.
Implementing The Product Launch Formula
I have put effort in mastering the product launch formula as you can see
in Part 1.
My experience with common yet powerful digital marketing tools like
Gmail, Blogger, LinkedIn, Facebook etc enabled me to successfully figure out a
way to implement it.
Therefore, Iam going to teach you this way so that you can join a
special group of successful entrepreneurs world wide who are prospering by duplicating
the product launch formula.
Thanks to the internet these days you only need to duplicate the winning
formula rather than cracking the head trying to reinvent the wheel. Somebody
somewhere has had the same problem you have right now, he or she successfully
solved it and they are sharing it on the world wide web. You just need to learn
from them.
If you think the product launch formula is too difficult to learn then the
involvement of common digital tools in the implementation is something that will
help you realize that this is something you can really do.
So lets get started.
1. Stories
Telling an emotional story of how you got started in your journey is a
powerful way of establishing authority. Stories helps your online audience to
relate and resonate with you as they realize that you are also human like them.
Furthermore, it is important because people always ask, “Why should I
listen to this guy ?”
So telling your story at the outset is very important because it answers
this question and establish authority.
What tool to use for telling a story ?
Blogger
A blog post is the best tool to use when you want to tell a story to
your audience of prospective customers. A blog is a website that allows you to
tell or publish your story (posts) through various formats like text, images
and videos.
At the end your readers can make comments thereby creating social proof
which happen to be another critical element of the product launch formula.
This therefore, mean you must set up a blog. There are many blogging
platforms out there but I recommend Blogger because I have used it since 2014
and it is the one you are on right now!
More reasons why blogger;
(1) Its free
Blogger is free forever yet its state of the art. This is good news for
start-ups because saving cash is a top most priority for them. Furthermore,
irrespective of the budget you wouldn’t want mediocrity.
(2) User friendly
I have also discovered that its dashboard is very user friendly. In 2014
a friend helped me set up my first blog Property Matters News and left.
However, because its dashboard was user friendly over the years I managed to do
a lot of cool things on my own including installing third party widgets in its
HTML.
So how does one set up a blog with Blogger ?
I recently opened a free blog on behalf of one of my students called
Aaron here are three simple steps I followed.
Step
1.
I opened a new Gmail account
The first step is opening a new Gmail account. A free blog on Blogger is based on a Gmail account.
Through experience I have noticed that if you want to start a blog for business its important to open a new Gmail account devoted to blogging only and this may mean another Gmail account if you already have one.
Here are the reasons why;
1.1 An employee, partner or any authorized personnel can have access to your blog dashboard without raising confidentiality fears. Confidentiality can be a challenge if you use an account you have been using for other business.
1.2 Your current Gmail account is probably congested right now it is therefore prudent to have an account committed to blog specific communication like lead feedback.
1.3 After all a Gmail account is free it doesn’t hurt to open another one or a few.
Step 2.
I signed in to Gmail
To set up and use the Blogger blog you must first sign in to Gmail. Google Inc now has a One Account for All Things Google policy. This means your Gmail account gives you access to all Google apps like You Tube, Google Plus, Google Play and Blogger itself . Since Blogger is a Google app you will therefore, access it by first signing in to Gmail.
Step 3.
I
visited the Blogger platform
After signing in to Gmail I clicked the grid for
Google apps on the top right hand corner. Then I visited the Blogger platform
by clicking the Blogger icon in the grid.
If you follow these three simple steps you can create your blog right
now and begin publishing your stories as soon as possible ! So get started I
look forward to hear about how you are doing in the comments section at the end.
2. Sequences
There are four types of sequences in the product launch formula as
follows;
i. Pre pre launch, ii. Pre launch
iii. Open cart iv. Post cart
i. Pre pre launch sequence
This is the very first activity you do even before the product is
completely developed. You are not selling anything yet but your aim is to do
the following;
a. Creating awareness about what is coming.
b. Creating a mailing list.
Awareness
and mailing list creation are achieved through prospecting and lead generation.
The pre pre launch leads your audience to the pre
launch.
How to create a mailing list ?
First and foremost you must
know that a mailing list is very important primarily because it is the only
thing you can truly own on the internet. You do not truly own your Facebook,
LinkedIn, or Twitter account.
Therefore, a mailing list
is the first thing to establish when doing a product launch or any form of
digital marketing !
Mailing list rules
(i) Violation Of Privacy :
People on your mailing list must have agreed to be on that list or opted in otherwise you are spamming.
(ii) Quality : Not everyone
goes on your mailing list. You must therefore, pre-qualify in order to ensure
that only leads or prospective customers
are on the mailing list.
(iii) Consistency and
relevancy : Continuously nurture and grow your mailing list with relevant
content
Steps for creating a great mailing
list through prospecting and lead generation
Step 1: Know your customer – Create a buyer persona
Step 2: Create a lead magnet
Step 3: Lead generation and
prospecting technics
Step 1: Know your customer – Create a buyer persona
Remember mailing list rule
number (ii)
(ii) Quality : Not everyone goes on your mailing list. You must
therefore, pre-qualify in order to ensure that only leads or prospective
customers are on the mailing list.
To ensure that only
prospective customers goes on the mailing list you must create a buyer persona
from the outset !
a. What is a buyer persona?
According to Hubspot a
buyer persona is a fictional, generalized representation of your ideal
customer.
b. Why it is important to digital
marketing?
i. A buyer persona helps
you create a quality mailing list made up of leads or people who are likely to
buy.
ii. A buyer persona helps you create tailor
made pre launch content that resonate with your ideal customer.
iii. Since its all about
sales you will not struggle to close at the end when you begin with a buyer
persona.
c. How to create a buyer
persona ?
A buyer persona is created
by doing a research that is conducted through interviewing your ideal customer.
Here are seventeen questions to ask during this research;
Role
1) What is your job role? Your title?
2) How is your job measured?
3) What does a typical day look like?
4) What skills are required to do your job?
5) What knowledge and tools do you use in your job?
6) Who do you report to? Who reports to you?
Company
7) In which industry or industries does your company work?
8) What is the size of your company (revenue, employees)?
Goals
9) What are you responsible for?
10) What does it mean to be successful in your role?
Objectives
11) What are your biggest challenges?
Watering Holes
12) How do you learn about new information for your job?
13) What publications or blogs do you read?
14) What associations and social networks do you participate in?
Personal Background
15) Describe your personal demographics (if appropriate, ask
their age, whether they're married, if they have children).
16) Describe your educational background. What level of
education did you complete, which schools did you attend, and what did you
study?
17) Describe your career path. How did you
end up where you are today?
Step 2: Create a lead
magnet
Creating a buyer persona
enables you to create a lead magnet. A lead magnet is a piece of content that
resonate with your ideal customer and helps you acquire contact details
especially email addresses from the right people.
A lead
magnet is free and a person who agrees to exchange his contact details with it is
a lead or your ideal custom. Use the email addresses acquired to create a
mailing list.
Step 3: Lead generation and
prospecting technics
Now that you know who your
ideal customer is and that your lead magnet is created you can begin lead
generation and prospecting.
Lead contact details are
valuable. Now its easy to get those contact details by offering the lead what
you know he or she wants (lead magnet) for free.
This is a typical bait and
hook strategy.
Here is how you can do
this.
(i) Opt in page (ii)
Script prospecting (iii) Google contacts
(i) Opt in page
The process
is usually automated on a website through an opt-in page. What’s an opt-in page
?
It’s a page
on your website or blog where someone go to learn about your products and they
may see a promise that says “Hey enter your name and e-mail right here and you
gonna get access to this free thing.”
Else where it
is also called a lead capture page.
What about if
you do not have money right now to hire a web developer ? After all your
project is in the formative stages you can’t set up a website at the moment. So
how do you do lead generation under these circumstance where you do not have a
website ?
These are
some of the questions I had to also ask as an entrepreneur so I created script
prospecting .
(ii) Script
prospecting
This is a
technic I created in order to acquire an ideal customer’s email address by
conducting prospecting using only a script without a website.
You use the script in the Messaging feature of LinkedIn. LinkedIn
birthdays, anniversaries and other similar features are meant to give you an
excuse to start a marketing conversation with a stranger.
For
example
YOU : Happy birthday
YOUR CONNECTION : Thank
you
YOU : Welcome. Hey
Iam offering a free presentation (lead magnet) titled;
3 Steps For Selling A House
Registration is in progress.
Do you happen to know someone who
may be interested ?
YOUR
CONNECTION : Me I am interested
YOU :
Please share your e-mail address
YOUR CONNECTION : yourconnection@gmail.com
Boom !
You have secured a lead without paying anyone a single cent for website
development.
The next
step is sending to the lead the promised lead magnet through Gmail. Before
doing this you need to “ Create Contact” with Google Contacts. Your leads need to
be recorded somewhere safe. So this way you have begun creating your mailing
list.
(iii)
Google contacts
After
acquiring an email address through prospecting on social media like LinkedIn script
prospecting being an example as shown above Google Contacts is an email
marketing technology that is both great and free for creating a mailing list or
database of leads.
Using
this tool you want to create a mailing list that abides to the aforementioned
rules.
So follow
these steps;
Firstly, go to Google Contacts by clicking the grid at the top right of your Gmail account as shown.
Secondly,
after clicking the grid various Google apps appears. Find and click the
Contacts app as shown below.
Third, in the Contacts app find on the left the option for creating a label as shown.
Forth, click the Create Label option and type the name of your mailing list as shown
Finally, click Create Contact under new label. Create new contact by typing in the lead email address you acquired during script prospecting together with other details like name, surname, company. Except for the email everything else is available on the lead’s LinkedIn profile.
ii. Pre launch sequence
According to the product launch formula your pre launch content is
presented as a framework that is broken down by three types of content. For
example The LinkedIn Connections
Converter Special Part 1 to 3.
Remember
the mailing list you created in Google Contacts and continue to create non stop
as long as your business require digital marketing ?
The purpose of that mailing list is for you to send Part 1 as promised
during prospecting. A couple of days later you send Part 2, a couple of days
later you send Part 3, a couple of days later you finally enter the Open Cart
Sequence where you begin taking orders.
Part 1 is the lead magnet you promised during prospecting. Part 2 and 3
are its sequels. So the lead magnet can also be known as pre launch content
one. Likewise its sequels are pre launch content 2 and pre launch content 3.
This content can be a blog post, a video or PDF and your platform should
allow for comments at the end in order to facilitate community creation. A blog
post does the job really well in this regard.
Three types of content during the pre launch sequence;
Pre launch content 1- Opportunity
Pre launch content 2 – Transformation
Pre launch content 3 – Ownership
How to post Pre Launch Content on Blogger ?
Step 1 Log in to Gmail
As long as you are logged in or after you have logged in to the Google account your blog is also logged in. Remember Google has a One Account for all things Google policy. This means if you created
your blog with one of your Google accounts say Gmail or Google+ and if you are already logged in to any of these therefore, your blog account is also automatically logged in.
Step 2 Click Powered By Blogger
Visit your blog by typing in its URL in the browser. Click Powered By
Blogger at the bottom in order to go to the blog dashboard. On the dashboard
click New Post and the post creation page will appear.
Step 3 Create Post Using Editing Tools
The post creation page is user friendly because it has standardized
editing tools similar to those on
Microsoft Word like UNDO, REDO, FONT SIZE,
TEXT COLOUR, ALIGNMENT, CHECK SPELLING together with others
like ADD OR REMOVE LINK, INSERT IMAGE, INSERT A VIDEO, and INSERT JUMP BREAK.
Lets talk about how to use ADD OR REMOVE LINK and
INSERT JUMP BREAK.
A.ADD OR REMOVE LINK
In order to make this happen you;
1.Copy the URL,
2.Highlight the text that you want
3.Click ADD OR REMOVE LINK.
The blog gives an option in which there are two bars
namely Text to display (for the text)
and Link to (for the URL) . The text that you would have highlighted will be already typed in for you in the Text to display bar but the Link to bar will be blank.
4.Paste into the blank bar, the
URL (website address) you would have earlier copied.
5.Finally, click
OK and the link is created.
B.INSERT JUMP BREAK
This breaks your post into part(s) and hide those that follow so that users can
easily browse your blog. When readers want to read the hidden
parts they click MORE…
To make this happen you click the point where you want the break to happen and then you click INSERT JUMP BREAK and its done.
Once your post is done you can click PUBLISH
or SAVE in order to make it a draft. Other options to
explore are PREVIEWand CLOSE
iii. Open Cart Sequence
Finally this is where you begin taking orders. The idea here is that you
tell your audience that after the free value you were sharing here is something
to buy and this will be your offer, your product or service you are selling.
You do this through the concept of the sideways sales latter and this is
a process that takes between 5 to 7 days.
You have to make sure that there is a definitive end to your launch. By
this I mean they have to act by the end of the launch or some negative
consequence takes place – its either bonuses goes away, the price goes up or
the offer comes off the market.
So what will be happening here is that in each of those 5 days you will
be sending sales emails.
For example;
Day 1 email
- oh look at these case
studies
Day 2 email
- oh frequently asked
questions
Day 3 email
- oh its going to close
down soon you need to get it today
Day 4 email
- oh I added this bonus
Day 5 email
- oh let me tell you a story about one of the
people who have had success with it
- hey you have got only a
few hours left and now it’s the time to act
How to send sales emails to a mailing list ?
When I started using mailing lists it always worried me that recipients
could see the entire mailing list. The was worrisome because the mailing list
could be abused through spam.
So the answer was to use BCC which stands for Blind Carbon Copy. BCC
hide the mailing list from individual recipients. To use BCC follow these
steps;
Step 1
Click Forward
Step 2
Click Edit Subject
Step 3
Type your email address in the To _ field
Step 4
iv. Post Cart Sequence
Once the promotion is over it does not mean you are done. You can cross
sell, down sell or up sell additional products. After the trust created when a
customer bought your product during the open cart sequence you can leverage and
sell something additional.
For example if you sold a laptop
you can cross sell a laptop bag ! Then, the
whole sequence starts over again until your next official launch.
(3) Mental Triggers
Mental triggers are factors that impact how we make
decisions. Lets go through three important ones here;
i. Authority
When we perceive someone is in a position of authority then
we pay more attention to them. As you share free value you are actually
teaching and by so doing you are creating enormous authority. You are
positioning yourself as the go to expert.
For example if you
teach what you have results in you become a results
expert. Other types of experts are the reporter
expert and the role model. The
reporter expert is the person who synthesize a lot of ideas from everybody else
and reports that so that they minimize your time of research. The role model is
the person you admire and respect who is going to help you improve your life
and grow your business.
ii. Social proof
This is the idea that when we see a lot of other people
doing something then we will do it as well. For instance Amazon reviews - you
go to Amazon you look at one product and it got 12 reviews but the other one
has got 12 000 reviews. You are going to think that there is something going on
with the 12 000 reviews. Isn’t it ?
So when you post your free value under the pre launch
sequence on say a blog people are going to comment below creating a community.
This will create social proof that will eventually work in your sales’ favour.
iii. Scarcity
When there is a limited amount of something we tend to want
it more. The open cart is the last sequence and as you go towards the end of
the open cart sequence you have to ensure that there is a definitive end to you
launch.
By this I mean they have to act by the end of the launch or
some negative consequence takes place. Its either the offer is no longer quite
as attractive or the price goes up or the offer comes off the market.
Frequently Asked Questions
We have gone through a lot of information in Part 2 definitely there are questions . What are these questions ? What are the answers ? This exercise will be conducted in Part 3.
So do not miss Part 3 !
However, I await to hear your feedback about Part 2 in the comment
section below . Thanks.
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