Here’s the scenario.
It’s been seven months since you launched your online business yet your monthly sales have been close to nonexistent all this time.
“This is really frustrating,” you say to yourself.
You spent countless hours -- let alone thousands of dollars -- to develop an online business hoping that it will soon become your cash cow, yet the only thing it’s done so far is suck your bank account dry.
The struggle is real, isn’t it?
I know how you feel all too well since most of my customers almost always tell me the same problem when they come to me for help.
If you’re sick and tired of seeing the same disappointing sales figure every single month, then allow me to share with you three high-impact marketing strategies that you can use to explode your business’ growth.
Let’s hop right in.
1. Publish expert roundups
Here’s the gist of the strategy:
Step 1. Think of an epic headline that the influencers would want to be in, and one that provides real value to the readers.
Here’s an example. “21 Fitness Gurus Share their Number 1 Tip to…”
Because of how you positioned your title, the industry experts will want to be included in the write-up because everyone in the post is tagged as a guru.
Step 2. Find the influencers online then reach out to them. Ask them for their tips or ideas on the article that you’re writing about, then add their quote (and link to them) in your article. Do this in bulk since some of them won’t reply to you, or perhaps straight up decline your offer.
Step 3. Create and publish the content.
Step 4. Tell the experts that the post is now live. Share the URL of the live article then ask them to share it with their audience. Remember to ask nicely. 🙂
Step 5. Nurture your relationship with the experts by featuring them on interviews, or giving them freebies (among other things).
Now that you have a bird’s-eye view of the process, let’s dive in deep on some of the steps so you’ll have a better understanding of how they work.
Creating an epic headline.
Instead of thinking of an epic headline from scratch, there are formulas that I can share with you that will make your headline creation process as painless as possible.
While there are certainly bazillions of headline formulas out there, what I’m about to share with you are some of the best-performing ones that I’ve uncovered based on my experience.
1.Double benefits
(Benefit 1) and (benefit 2) in (reasonable time window) by (actions that are simple/easy to do)
Ex. Get Ripped and Attract Beautiful Girls in Less than a Month by Doing this Simple Exercise
2. The good ol’ listicles + Industry experts
Ex. 15 Pilates Experts Reveal Their Daily Routine for a...
3. The fear factor
Ex. 7 Fitness Exercises that Can Cause Paralysis. I’ve Been Doing Number 3 Since...
When you put themes number one and two together, you can come up with an epic headline along the lines of “10 Fitness Experts Share Their 1 Best Tip to Get You Ripped and Attract Beautiful Girls.”
Pretty amazing, huh?
I strongly suggest that you continue rounding up several headline formulas on the web so you can mix and match them together. That way, you’ll find it easier to create your very own mind-blowing headlines.
Finding the influencers in bulk and reaching out to them.
These are the free tools that you can use:
Buzzstream’s Link Query Generator
You need this tool to come up with advanced Google search queries to help you get targeted results from Google’s search engine.
This is the tool that you’ll use to scrape the data off of the search results page.
You need Similarweb to assess the quality of the influencer’s website. For the most part, you will use it to determine if the influencer has a decent amount of monthly traffic, and what their website’s traffic source is.
Here’s the step by step process that you need to follow:
Step 1: Generate advanced search queries.
Use Buzzstream’s Link Query Generator to come up with several advanced search queries that will help you get targeted results from using the search engines.
* Note - you don’t have to add all the details that the tool is asking for. Simply typing in your keyword will suffice.
This is the kind of results that you’ll get after clicking the “Create Link Building Queries” button.
The search queries above are designed to command the search engines (specifically Google and Bing) to look for websites with the words “Fitness Experts” on them; and those that accept guest post opportunities.
At this point, what you need to do is to store all of these search queries in a spreadsheet, then get back to them later.
Step 2. Install SEOQuake.com
Install the SEOQuake plugin to your browser. Make sure that it is active.
Step 3. Enter the advanced search queries.
Type in the advanced search queries in Google’s search box one at a time.
Step 4. Scrape the SERPs.
Scrape the results SERP (Search Engine Results Page) by clicking the “Export CSV” option.
* Note - you can customize the data that you can scrape along with the search results by clicking the “Parameter” option, then ticking the boxes of the data that you prefer to see.
Step 5. Check the website’s quality.
I check the monthly traffic of each site by typing in their domain name in Similarweb’s search box; then I scroll to the section where it says, “Total Visits.”
* Note - qualifying websites can be as simple or as complicated as you’d like it to be. Others look into the websites’ Trust Flow, DA (Domain Authority), or PA (Page Authority), etc.
For my part, I just look into the website’s traffic (it should be no less than 10k), aesthetics, content, and also its relevance. These are the general qualifiers that I look into. However, I usually end up adding more qualifiers like the website’s Trust Flow and the DA (minimum of 30) if the client’s purpose for marketing is to rank in the SERPs.
Be sure to assess your prospective websites accordingly based on your goals for marketing.
How To Increase The Success Rate Of Your Outreach.
At this point, you now have a list of influencers with decent websites. All you need to do is reach out to them.
Before you send them an outreach message, however, you need to realize that these influencers are often busy. You need to be very careful with how you craft your message.
If you’ll send them something lengthy, there’s a good chance that they’ll ignore you. However, if you’ll send them something too short, you run the risk of not being able to convey enough value to them, therefore causing them to ignore you as well.
How should you craft your outreach message then, you might ask?
Sample outreach template.
Here’s a template that you can use.
“Hi (first name),
You are spot on when you said, “(quote from one of their articles)” on your article about “(title of their article with a hyperlink to the actual post.)”
I’m currently working on an article about, “(what your article is about.)” can you share your thoughts about it? A one-liner perhaps?
I’d love to share your expert advice with my community. I’ll be more than happy to give your ideas proper attribution by mentioning your name as the source and linking to your website.
I look forward to hearing from you soon. Take care.
Kind regards,
(Your signature)”
There are a couple of things that I like about this template:
- It is highly customizable.
- It is relatively short.
- It is very conversational.
Before you use this template, I need you to consider these points:
- Make sure that you read their article, and you truly appreciate the advice that they gave; otherwise, you’re only manipulating them.
- Make sure that the article you are referencing is relevant to the article topic that you are working on.
- If you aren’t happy with the results, experiment. Add other elements to the template like adding a “How you can benefit from this” subheading.
The benefits of using this strategy:
- You can turn the influencers in your industry into your very own brand ambassadors.
- You’ll get more traffic.
- Your brand will have better visibility online.
- You’ll get more link juice which in turn will help you rank on the search results pages.
- It will solidify your brand’s reputation as an expert in the industry.
Now that we’re in this phase of the process, you are now equipped with the elements that you need to starting sending effective outreach messages to the influencers.
Once they reply with their ideas, you can now put together the content. If you’re quite oblivious about how an expert roundup looks like, you can check out the expert roundup that I published in the past as an example.
When the article goes live, be sure to contact the influencers and tell them about it. Tell them to share it or link to it from their website. Since their ideas are in the post, the chances of them sharing it with their community will drastically increase.
2. Use community-driven sites.
By community-driven sites, I’m talking about sites like Quora.com, TripAdvisor or discount coupon sites (among others).
Depending on which platform you’ll target, the way you’ll go about your marketing strategy will vary.
Of all the community-driven sites that I’ve used, however, I have found that discount coupon sites tend to get me the best results in terms of getting more sales and leads.
Allow me to share with you the steps that I follow when using discount coupon sites.
Step 1: Hire a graphic designer to create a professional-looking discount coupon.
I like going to Fiverr.com to get my graphic design done. Not only do they have excellent graphic designers, but their gigs are also very affordable ($5 plus the $1 processing fee).
If you type in the keyword “graphic design” in Fiverr’s search box, the system will come up with bazillions of graphic design gigs that you can use to have your coupon created.
It’s important to remember that Fiverr has three filters for their search results. You can filter the results by their relevance, the average customer review, or the newest arrivals.
Out of all the options, choose “Avg. Customer Review” so you’ll get the gigs with the most positive ratings. This ensures that you’re hiring nothing but the best designers in Fiverr.
Usually, the designers will be able to finish your design within 24 - 48 hours if they don’t have that many orders in queue.
Once your discount coupon has been designed and delivered to you, you can proceed to step number 2.
Step 2: Look for discount coupon sites where you can add your coupons.
I just use Google’s advanced search queries to look for niche specific discount coupon sites. However, if I can’t find any (this tends to happen quite a lot, by the way), I just go with the generic ones.
This is the advanced search query that I often use → Your keyword intitle:discount coupon sites
For example, if you’re selling grocery items, you can use this search query, “Grocery intitle:discount coupon sites.”
This is what Google will come up with.
As you can see, the results are highly relevant to the niche that we specified in the search query -- groceries.
At this point, you just need to put together a list of discount coupon sites so you can add your discount coupons on all of them later.
Step 3: Add your discount coupon on the websites then start interacting with the other users.
Since you’ve already put together several discount coupon sites on step number 2, there’s nothing left for you to do but add your discount coupon on the websites and interact with the other users.
What I like the most about using discount coupon sites is the fact that their users are often very engaging. The users often share, upvote or comment on the discount coupons added, which can help increase the chances of your discount offers going viral.
I remember using Dealspotr to spread the word on two of my clients’ discount offers. One was running a Halloween special, while the other was offering a 45% discount on their vapes.
It’s interesting since we didn’t really invest that much time and resources on Dealspotr. We only added our discount coupons and asked everyone from our team to create an account on the website then we had them share, upvote and comment on the coupon.
However, even having said that, the returns that we’ve gotten were quite astounding. In just about 3 - 5 days from the time the coupon was added, we managed to see a 20% - 30% increase in our sales.
3. The Posterboy formula.
I came across the Posterboy formula through Bryan Harris’ blog. Though the strategy seemed very simple, I was amazed at how solid the rationale is behind it, so I ended up using it on several of my clients’ marketing campaigns.
The results I’ve gotten were epic.
Here’s how the strategy works:
Step 1: Follow the influencers and read their content.
Step 2: Follow the advice that the influencers shared.
Step 3: Contact the influencers and tell them that you followed their advice and that you’ve gotten amazing results. Thank them.
Step 4: Offer to write a case study of how you implemented their advice and the kind of results that you’ve gotten.
As you can see, the strategy is pretty straightforward. Even if you are new in the internet marketing scene, you’d be able to follow the steps that I mentioned.
There are a plethora of reasons why the influencer will tend to accept your collaboration request.
- You’re offering to give the influencer a case study for free. Everybody loves case studies especially if it is about how amazing their tips are.
- Through your case study, you’re about to validate to the influencer’s audience that the influencers’ tips are in fact effective. In short, you’re about to make them look awesome.
- You’re giving the influencer free PR, content, and social validation.
The benefits of using the Posterboy Formula.
- Relationship building. The steps that you need to follow to do the Posterboy formula is conducive to building relationships with the influencers. It’s non-intrusive, and it gives value to the influencer, their community and yourself.
- You’ll get more traffic, leads, and sales.
- Because you are featured on the influencer’s website, it will help solidify your brand’s image as an expert in your industry.
- This strategy is perfect for link building. Since your case study is going to be published on their website, you’ll be able to get links.
To find the influencers in your industry (and their websites) in bulk, you can follow the steps that we outlined in the previous tip about publishing expert roundups.
Conclusion
Whether you’re looking to improve your sales, leads, traffic, or your online visibility, you can use any of the strategies that I shared above. I have used these strategies myself, and I guarantee you that if you take the time to use and learn from them, you are bound to get great results out of your marketing efforts.
What’s more, none of the steps that I mentioned require you to spend thousands of dollars to execute.
What’s next?
If you have questions, suggestions, or additional marketing strategies that you’d like to share with our community, please share them in the comments section below. Cheers!