Too many courses, ebooks and reports outlining how to create your own product (in my opinion) don’t give enough strategies for you to find out what people want before you spend your time (money) developing a product.
I’ve seen people completely devastated by the fact that no one wants the product they’ve created. They realized too late that nobody but them wanted their product.
Weeks… Months… or even Years… Wasted.
I don’t want to see that happen to you. I’m about to give you a few solid techniques for delving into the minds of your target market and get them to TELL you how to get their money. People want solutions and they will tell their problems to just about anyone who they believe capable of delivering a solution.
FIRST TECHNIQUE: Thank You and How Can I Get Your Money, I Mean Is There Anything I Can Do For You? ;-)
I’ve rarely seen this done, but it’s a very powerful way to get insight into what your target market wants from you.
I know you give away something for free on your site so I’m going to show you how to turn your freebie into a “Million Dollar” idea generating machine.
When someone goes to your site looking for your freebie, do you ask for their email address before letting them download it? If not… Shame on you. Go sit in the corner for 10 minutes and think about how wrong that is.
Seriously… What are you thinking? Capture the leads you generate. The future of your business depends on it. Now that you’re collecting the email address of the people who want your freebie here’s what you do…
Use your “Thank You” page as a feedback form.
Instead of just having a message that says your email has been sent… “Ask People What Type Of Information Would Really Help Them Out In Their Business”. Don’t waste the opportunity to get valuable feedback you can use to get ideas for products you probably never would have considered before.
It’s free targeted research handed to on a silver platter. I love it when people complain about something and you should too. Listening to complaints puts you in a position to step in and say… “Hey, everything will be alright. Just send me $x.xx and I’ll make the pain go away”.
SECOND TECHNIQUE: Pay For Feedback
This is a variation on the first technique where instead of sitting back and waiting for your existing traffic to request your freebies from you… You go out and create a surge of new traffic you can collect feedback from.
How?
Ezine ads of course.
With this strategy you only want to “risk” money you can afford to use on testing or gathering valuable feedback. Then, in your ad(s) you aren’t going to sell a product directly. You’re going to be offing a free download instead.
Remember… The feedback you generate on your “Thank You” page is what you’re after. Your free offer should be tailored to the list you’ll be advertising to and it should also be something that people will get reprint rights to after they download it.
This is best done with a unique report of your own creation. The reason is simple. You can design your report to promote various affiliate programs and give people the option of customizing it before they give it away for a small fee.
Since most people will want to make money from links within something they give away… you will be able to generate revenue from something that you give away for free. Plus, since this freebie will come with free reprint rights it will continue to spread and draw more traffic to your site.
There are literally thousands of frustrated people out there practically foaming at the mouth for something valuable to sell or giveaway without creating it themselves. Be the person who gives them what they want.
The primary purpose of your freebie however is to build your list and get people to your “Thank You” page. Instead of charging a fee for people to get a custom copy of your report you can offer the option of customization for free if they will give you feedback on what type of product they’re looking for.
Like this…
1) Someone gives you their email address in a form.
2) They are forwarded to the download page of your freebie where they see a headline similar to… “Would you like a free custom copy of the report you just requested so that YOU can profit by giving it away?
3) Then explain that you would like their input. Ask an open- ended question that requires a little thought. Find out what problems people have.
This is a very irresistible offer many will find it hard to pass up. You can not only get your target audience to TELL you in explicit detail how to get their money… You can potentially get thousands of dollars in free advertising when these people spread your report with reprint rights all around the Internet.
Ideally your report should be in PDF format. The thing is… in the past you would have to customize each report by hand, but for the purpose of what I’m talking about here that’s just not very practical. There are better ways to spend your time.
So, what you CAN do is turn over the .doc and .html version of your report along with instructions on which affiliate programs to join and where to insert those links.
Then, you should also let people know what they cannot do to your information. For example if they only have the rights to add in their affiliate links… Say that. If you will let them add information about their site and newsletter… Say that.
THIRD TECHNIQUE: Ask Your Subscribers.
If you have a nice sized list you won’t have to look outside of your own circle of influence for product ideas. Your subscribers should be MORE than willing to give you the feedback you’re after. You could set up a simple survey to collect the results.
You want to ask open ended questions. If you questions can be answered with a yes or no then you’re asking the wrong questions. You want people to open up and tell you what they want.
Again, you could use a report with reprint rights as an incentive. It shouldn’t take you too long to write up a ‘hot’ report that your subscribers would drool over. Re-read the first two reports in this eCourse.
FOURTH TECHNIQUE: Create A Feedback Product Page
I’ve used variations of this technique to get inside the mind of my potential customers by having them tell me what they want without even realizing it.
Once you have your link counter it’s time to set up your tracking page. This is just a simple HTML page where you have two to three headlines stressing different benefits.
For example…
Headline #1:
Insider Secrets To Making Fast Money With Other People’s Products!
Headline #2:
Discover the Little-Known Secrets To Creating ‘Hot’ Video Tutorials Your Customers Will Jump At the Chance To Buy!
Headline #3:
Rarely Talked About Insider “Fast Money Secrets” That Can Put Money In Your Pockets In As Little As 7 Days!
Of course you wouldn’t label the headlines with Headline #1 and so on. I just did that in this email.
Link each of those headlines to an affiliate product or a product that shows people how to do what the headlines suggests. You can possibly make affiliate sales and you can see what type of information people are interested in most by which link gets the most clicks.
Instead of asking for feedback you can just count the clicks to see where you should focus your time and energy. You may still want to take what you learn from the clicks you get and use one of the other techniques above. Ask people to back up your “click data”. Find out how many of them would be interested in a product like the one that got all the clicks.
This is a simple way to see where people’s interests are.
FIFTH TECHNIQUE: Use Your Email As An Idea Generator
I constantly get emails from people telling me all about their marketing problems and the gripes they have with the way other marketers run their businesses. I always pay attention to this.
I’m also constantly getting questions from frustrated marketers who have tried a bunch of different things with no success. Those emails go right into a special folder that I keep to give me some insight into what people want.
SIXTH TECHNIQUE: The Encrypted Surprise Bonus
The idea here is simple. When people download your freebie, you add in a simple extra report that’s encrypted. People will need a password to open it. Include a README.html file that explains what’s on the encrypted file and includes a web page to get the password needed to open it.
Once a person is on the page you’ve given them, they see what?… A feedback form of course. They are told that the password is theirs in exchange for answering a question or two.
What type of product (In Their Mind) would give them more control over their business or… What type of product would they LOVE to get their hands on.
Then when they hit submit… They get the password. To make this work you have to really make them want the encrypted file enough to go through the trouble.
You might also consider offering them free reprint rights to the encrypted report. That’s always a good incentive. I know this would work for me.
SEVENTH TECHNIQUE: Collaborate
There’s that word again. If you think that you always have to do things on your own… You don’t.
Let’s say that you want to co-create a product with someone. Why not BOTH use a few of these techniques for a few weeks and then compare notes so that you can BOTH get a great idea for the type of product the two of you need to develop?
Your partner will find out things that you probably wouldn’t have known otherwise and vice versa.
Taking the time to find out what people want will quickly put you on the road to developing powerhouse information and/or software products. I’m sure you can come up with many more variations on the ideas that I’ve presented today so get to it.
Tomorrow I’ll show you a simple way to write a report or a whole series of them. It’s a lot easier than you think. This eCourse is just a collection of reports. There’s no reason why you can’t create your own eCourse using what you’ll see.
Tagged with:
ad •
ads •
advertisement •
affiliate •
believability •
benefit •
collaboration •
dollar idea •
ebook •
ebooks •
ecourse •
ecourses •
email •
email address •
ezine •
focus •
free •
freebie •
headline •
idea •
insight •
marketers •
marketing •
money •
newsletter •
pdf •
profits •
promote •
promotion •
secret •
shame •
silver platter •
somethin •
subscriber •
subscribers •
target market •
targeted research •
time money •
traffic •
undefined
