The Basics of Online Marketing
In order for us to be able to understand each other, we have to speak the same language. Just like we covered the basics of Bitcoin in the beginning of this book now we need to cover the basics of online marketing. I promise you it will be more interesting than you can imagine.
First of all define your product
In order to start building a marketing plan you have to define your product using three simple questions:
- What problem does my product solve?
- What are its benefits?
- What are its features?
The first question should be pretty simple for you to answer if you went through Part II of this book since it should correlate with your problem assumption. I would like to take a moment and describe the difference between questions two and three, meaning what's the difference between features and benefits.
Simply put, a benefit is what the user gets out of using your product. So the benefit of reading this book would be to make more money or to learn about Bitcoin business opportunities out there.
Features are technical aspects of your product. So in the case of this book, its features would be that it's a digital eBook, that it has over 200 pages and contains 15 chapters.
Let's take another example - The TREZOR hardware wallet. The benefits of TREZOR is that your Bitcoins are secure and that you can send Bitcoins from any computer you like without needing to worry if it's compromised or not.
The features of the TREZOR wallet are that it's compatible with six different Bitcoin hot wallets, it uses a 24 word recovery seed, and it costs $129 and so on.
So features will usually be more boring than benefits. Benefits give the user the answer to the most important question they have - what's in it for me? The distinction between the two is critical as it will be the basis for all of our marketing copy.
Think about these three questions for your own product and try to see if you can answer them right now, I'll still be here when you get back, I promise.
There’s one thing you HAVE to find out before carrying out your marketing plan
I know you want to get right on to all of the neat marketing tricks I'm going to teach you in this book but before we can even consider that we have to answer another very basic question: Who are we targeting?
Too many times I hear the answer "everyone" and that's a sure recipe for failure. You can't target "everyone"; you need to have a well-defined, focused target audience.
Every universe has its characters. The Star Wars universe has Jedi knights, imperial soldiers and Wookiees. The Lord of the Rings universe has warriors, magicians and thieves. Each character has a specific role to play that keeps that universe in balance, and the Bitcoin universe isn't that much different.
So let's take a look at the different characters that are taking part in the Bitcoin universe and try to see which one best describes your target audience.
Bitcoin Evangelists
Techie
The Techie is usually a hardcore programmer, when he looks at Bitcoin he sees the Matrix. He understands what it is, how it's built and the algorithms that power it. He can explain to you the protocols that are used to perform transactions and the different encryptions used throughout the process. The Techie has an important role since his kind created Bitcoin, and without him there would be no universe.
Trader
After the Techie comes the Trader. The Trader sees Bitcoin as an investment instrument. He understands the Techie's vision but also looks at Bitcoin from a trading perspective. He knows how to analyze its fluctuation in price, he tries to predict where the Bitcoin will go next. If Techies created the Bitcoin universe then the Traders are its engine. They are the ones that influence exchange rates and volumes of trade. Without the Trader the Bitcoin would still be another crazy idea that no one acts upon.
Hustler
The Hustler spots the business opportunity in Bitcoin. He sees the Trader at work and understands that a new market is emerging. The Hustler will come up with different business ventures and startups related to Bitcoin. He will setup websites to monetize on the idea. While his friend the Trader is busy "looking for gold" he will be focused on "selling him a shovel". The Hustler plays an important part in the Bitcoin universe since he is the only character that conveys the idea of Bitcoin to the new users in an easy to grasp way. This is due to the fact that he is a salesman in nature, and as a salesman he understand that the idea of Bitcoin has to be simplified to the public.
Bitcoin Users
Merchant
The merchant allows the word about Bitcoin to spread as he allows it as a form of payment in his store. The merchant's role is crucial since without him there will be no Buyer and therefor no justification for the existence of such a currency. The Merchants are what gives Bitcoin it's actual power - the ability to be worth something.
Buyer
Each person who uses Bitcoins to purchase goods is considered a buyer. This could be a visitor on an e-commerce site such as Overstock or someone who's trying to get firearms or drugs illegally. The Buyer validates the power the Merchant dictates for the Bitcoin by choosing it as his currency. Although Buyers and Merchants seem like "plain" characters, without them there would be no actual value to Bitcoin.
Bitcoin Dabblers
Skeptic
The Skeptic is basically a douchebag. Not because he's a bad guy but mainly due to the fact that he criticizes Bitcoin without actually knowing what it is or even trying to use it. But the Skeptic also has a role in the Bitcoin universe, he helps us understand what people are afraid of. The one who benefits the most out of the Skeptic's work is the hustler, who understands what the common objections to the currency are, and finds way to neutralize them.
Traditional Institutions
Finally we come to the traditional institutions. The banks, the governments, big corporations, everything that moves slowly and hates change. They are the probably the toughest opponent the Bitcoin evangelists face and if they will be beaten then Bitcoin would win. The power of these institutions is strong and they can do all sorts of nasty stuff from banning the use of Bitcoin entirely to just not allowing you to transfer money to Bitcoin exchanges.
If we look at all of these character types together, we can segment these characters into several archetypes:
Unaware and unknowledgeable
This group consists of people who don't know that Bitcoin exist and don't know anything about it as well. If you're targeting this group you won't be able to speak "bitcoinish", meaning you'll have to explain everything from step one. A good example for this group would be my grandmother. This group consists a lot from skeptics and traditional institutes.
Aware and unknowledgeable
This group is the Bitcoin "newbies". It's people who know about Bitcoin and may be interested in it but don't know anything more. They don't understand how the currency works, what is mining, where you can buy it, etc. If you target this group you still can't talk "Bitcoinish" but at least you know they are willing to listen. In my opinion this is the biggest and most profitable group to target.
Most of the times people from this group will get into Bitcoin out of curiosity or because they think they can profit from it. In this group you'll usually find the buyer, the hustler, the trader and the merchant.
Aware and knowledgeable
These are the "Techies". People who know about Bitcoin and it's inner workings. They understand what a hash is, what confirmation are and they don't need any technical explanations. They are into Bitcoin because they see the technological value in it.
I know you may think all of this is philosophical bullshit, but it will actually help you craft your marketing message much more easily, since you'll know the language of the person you're targeting.
For example, 99Bitcoins' audience is built mainly from traders, buyers and hustlers. That's why you won't find any technical babble on the site. If you already own a site that has traffic coming in to it you can use Google Analytics to better understand your audience. All you need to do is enable demographics and interest reports as explained here.
As you can see there is a majority of men at the age of 25-34, and here is a breakdown of their interests:
So now I have a better understanding of my audience. Of course there is a lot more information I can dig out from analytics like geographic information, what devices do they use to browse my site, etc. That's how I build what is known as a "persona" in marketing. Personas are fictional
characters created to represent the different user types that might use a site, brand, or product in a similar way.
So ideally you'd want to create around 2-3 personas of people who would use your site/product and then decide which one of them you're going to target first. You create a persona by giving it an actual name, describing where they live, what they eat for breakfast and keep on going with as many details possible until you get a clear understanding of your customer.
One great tool that will guide you in your persona making is Persona Do. A completely free website that helps you create your personas by asking you (many) questions about them.
Chapter 9.1: Every copy you’ll ever write starts with AIDA (not the opera)...
Online marketing is basically the art of getting people to take a desired action online. In order to do so we will use some sort of copy. That copy can be an Adwords ads, it can be a blog post, an image on Facebook or an email you send out to your subscribers. Whatever that copy is, you need to know how to craft it.
Luckily enough that's a pretty easy task once you know the rules for it. You see, there's a common logic to EVERY piece of effective marketing copy out there, and it's called AIDA. AIDA is short for Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.
Get their Attention
Before you start talking to someone you have to get their attention right? You can't show your ad to someone on Facebook if you can't get them to stop scrolling down their feed. So the first part of any effective marketing copy would be to grab the visitor's attention.
The best way to stop someone in the middle of something is to stand out. But since there are different channels we can use, getting your user's attention is going to be different every time.
For example, if we want to get a user's attention on Facebook, the best way to do it would be with a very compelling image. On the other hand, if we're trying to get the user's attention in his email inbox we will use his name in the email title.
So even though the "attention" part seems pretty obvious, I can tell you from experience that people seem to underestimate it. A good example of grabbing an existing user's attention on Facebook would be using a big Bitcoin logo - since it's something that an active Bitcoiner would be drawn to.
Arouse their Interest
Once you got the user's attention it's time to arouse his interest. This doesn't mean it's time to dump the whole load on him, but rather make him curious about your offer. Interest is usually generated through an intriguing headline.
Here are some good examples of interest generating Bitcoin headlines:
- "7 mistakes you probably made when you started out with Bitcoin"
- "How to generate $1,243 from Bitcoin in just 10 days"
- "Can Bitcoin help you predict the future?"
The sole purpose of the headline is to generate interest so that the user will read your article, or click your ad. Did you know that 60% of online users read only the headline and skip the whole articlel8?
Fortunately enough, we're going to learn seven power techniques which will get your readers so interested they'll have to continue reading.
Headline power technique #1 - Avoiding pain > Gaining pleasure
When you're writing a headline use negative key words to create more powerful emotions and thus encourage reaction. One of my most successful email headlines are these:
"The Deficit is Killing Countries Worldwide - Is Bitcoin The Solution?"
"Warning! I'd Stay Away From 99.9% of Bitcoin Cloud Mining Schemes"
"Is Bitcoin Bleeding to Death? 15% Decline in Bitcoin Price Optimism"
"Panic Stirs Around Bitcoin's Collapse (Down 15% in 3 Days)"
These examples worked much better at getting people to open and read my emails than any other "positive" example.
Headline power technique #2 - Use power words
Power words are words that have a high intensity to them. An example for these kinds of words could be: slaughter, reveal, unleash, stunning, begging etc. I learned this concept from one of the internet marketing legends, John Carlton. He actually put out a document with over 20 pages of power words which you can go over and choose from. Here's a link to it.
Headline power technique #3 - Create open loops
Open loops are used in books, films and TV series to keep you basically begging to know what happens next. It's called an open loop since it doesn't close up in order to leave you hanging. It's when I throw some sort of a hint at what's going on, but I don't give enough information to solve all of the puzzle. An example for an open loop title can be: "Breaking news: Coinbase is no longer the Bitcoin capitol of the United States"
If you see such a title, automatically you start thinking, "Well who is then?" This will hopefully get you reading the article to find out. The TV series LOST used this tactic to great effect. At the end of every episode you'd get a glimpse to a very dramatic turn of events in the next episode, getting you not being able to stop thinking about what happens next.
Headline power technique #4 - Ask questions
Asking questions in your headline is a great way to get your reader engaged. Whether we like it or not we're going to answer the question to what we read in our head. The questions shouldn't be hard to answer and they should hint about what your article, ad or product is about.
For example a good headline for this book would be:
"Would you want to know how to generate mind-blowing amounts of users for your Bitcoin business?"
See how I phrased the headline as a question while also incorporating a power word inside (mind blowing)? Also the question wasn't hard to answer and it gave a clue about the value of my product.
Headline power technique #5 - Be specific
I see so many "general" headlines around the web that it makes me crazy. You need to be extremely specific in your headline regarding the benefit for your user. If you take a look at the sales page for this book it says, "This is how I make $4,826 /month" for a reason. I could have just said how I make thousands of dollars but I wanted to be specific.
When you're specific you get the user to understand much better the value of your product and what it can do for him. Also it gives you larger credibility since you're giving an exact number.
Headline power technique #6 - Use special characters
One way you can make your headline stand out from the rest is by using special characters in it. When I talk about special characters, I mean any character that isn't a letter from the alphabet. Some good examples would be using the $ sign, the % sign, the # sign, the @ sign and the & sign.
Of course you can go crazy with this and add any character you want just don't go over punctuating your headline and making it look spammy like, "I will reveal all of my secrets!!!!!!!!!"
Headline power technique #7 - WIFM
WIFM stands for "What's In it For Me". Remember to answer this question when writing your headline since that's the ONLY thing the user cares about. A good way to test this out would be to write your headline and then give it to someone to read. After they read it ask them if they understand what they will get if they continue reading your article, sales page or whatever it is you're writing.
If they don't get the benefit of what you're trying to convey, go back to the drawing board.
Create Desire
Now comes the hard part, since up until now we had all sorts of tips and techniques. At this point things get a bit more abstract. Once you've got the user's attention and aroused their interest they are ready to listen to you. Now it's time to create desire. Desire is created through great copy, and great copy usually has some of the following elements:
Benefits first, features later
It's important to always start out by emphasizing the benefits of your product and not so much what it does. As you can see from the example of Coinbase's homepage, it only says, "Get started with Bitcoin", that's a benefit.
Only if you scroll further down the page will you get to the actual features of Coinbase like the ability to access Coinbase from a mobile app, the 2fa (two factor authentication) process they have and more.
So remember to start off with the benefits. It's not that features aren't important, they are; they just need to come at the right time.
Social proof
Showing off your social proof is something that creates desire for your product. For example, if you had some famous news site write about you, present their logo. If you have a quote from a famous person in the industry talking about your product, show it off. Even if you don't have any of these you can always use some sort of trust seal or a Bitcoin foundation member badge on your site.
For example, Ledger wallet - a Bitcoin hardware wallet manufacturer uses a quote from Gavin Andersen the chief scientist of the Bitcoin foundation on their homepage.
Address sticking points
If you already tried to sell your product online, you probably know what your users' sticking points are. Sticking points are things that get in the way of making the sale. A sticking point can be a high price, or an unknown brand. One good example for addressing the price sticking point is offering a money-back guarantee - just like the one you got on this book.
Another example of a sticking point can be the fear of the product being too difficult to understand. Many website have a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section that helps users relieve these sticking points.
The desire stage is probably the hardest stage to craft. Later in this chapter we'll talk about crafting landing pages and you'll get a better understanding of what can be done.
A clear call to action
The final part of AIDA is Action. And by action I mean you should put a visible, clear, short exciting, single call to action (also known as CTA). Basically it should be an offer your visitor can't refuse and that is as simple as it gets to execute. Here's an example from Circle's homepage.
Both CTAs look pretty much the same but I'd argue that Coinbase's much better. Why? Because it has one less field to fill out and "create Bitcoin wallet" is a much more exciting action than just "sign up".
Also, make sure it's easy for your users to find the CTA. So many times I see websites where the CTA is buried somewhere at the bottom of the page and the user has to scroll all the way down to see it.
Chapter 9.2: Let’s Put The Puzzle Together And Create The Ultimate Sales Copy
By now we've covered all of the online marketing basics you'll need to know, now let's tie everything up together. In the following chapters each time I'll cover a marketing channel I'll also explain how to craft the copy for that specific channel. So if, for example I'll explain about Google Adwords, I'll also talk about best practices to writing an Adwords ad. But for now I would like to use the information we've covered so far to explain how to build a high converting landing page.
Keep in mind that in this section we're only going to talk about the layout of the landing page. After that you will need to design and code the page. You can either do it yourself or through the use of freelancers as explained in the bonus chapter of Part II in this book.
Let's start out with a very general template I use for almost every landing page I set up. A landing page is just the name for the page the visitor "lands" on. It's usually the page you see after clicking an ad and it has a sole purpose of getting the visitor to take some sort of action (buy something, sign up etc.). Any page on your website can be considered a landing page.
We start out with the headline. As you already know, this is probably the most important part of the page as it will make the user decide if he's going to stay on the page or leave. Most users will leave your website in 10-20 seconds if they don't get a clear understanding of where they are and what's in it for theml9.
Examine the wireframe I've drawn out for you one more time. You'll probably notice there is a line stating "this is the fold" somewhere in the middle of the wireframe. The fold refers to anything that is visible on your webpage without scrolling and it's the most important part of the webpage since it's the one the every visitor sees.
The term "fold" comes from newspapers that are folded in two and you can only see the top part of the paper before deciding if you're going to buy them. That's why you'll usually see the most interesting headline in bold "above the fold" in almost every newspaper.
So laying out your website has two parts basically, above the fold and below the fold. Let's start out with what we would like to put above the fold. The above the fold line is usually between 570-600 pixels long.
Crafting the headline is done through the use of the power techniques we learned earlier. The headline should be one sentence long. If you find yourself still having more important things to say you can also add a smaller sub headline as shown in the wireframe above.
Keep in mind that when it comes to webpages, less is usually more. People don't spend a lot of time reading on webpages, they usually skim through them. That's why shorter and to the point text is much better than long cumbersome paragraphs.
Below the headlines comes the CTA (call to action). This should be a very clear button or link stating the benefit of following through on that action - for example, if you look at 99Bitcoins' homepage you'll see the following:
As you can see there's a very clear headline with a great benefit. A sub headline with additional features and a clear call to action button that explains the outcome of that action*
If you still have room above the fold to enter some more information you may want to consider showing some social proof in the form of a testimonial, or even better, logos of news sites that wrote about you with a link to the article.
But remember that the part above the fold is the only part of your website a 100% of your visitors see, so it has to be very precise in its marketing message. So many companies talk about themselves in this part instead of the benefits they can give their visitors; it's just a shame.
Here's a good example for a well-built above the fold section from a website called Brawker.
Ask yourself this - if you would have arrived at this site would you immediately understand what benefits you'd get out of it? I know I would. The value proposition is very clear, the call to action is short and simple and the button states the outcome of what will happen afterwards.
You'll also notice they don't even mention the site's name at all and that's a good thing. Nobody cares about your brand, trust me. All they care about is what you can do for them, that's how people are programmed in their core. So make sure to make that completely clear and don't waste and text on mentioning your brand or anything that isn't related to that.
Going back to our diagram, below the fold you should insert additional features and social proof. The layout I suggested above is one way to do it and you'll probably see a ton of other ways as well. Just make sure that if you put any text on your landing page you understand it's purpose. At this point the purpose should be to create desire.
As we've discussed earlier, you can put some frequently asked questions here in order to avoid sticking points, display some testimonials or even give some sort of a demo of your product. Don't forget to incorporate additional CTAs if the page gets to long since you don't want the user to have to scroll all the way up to the top of the page in order to follow through on your offer.
For the final example I'd like to take Local Bitcoins - a website dedicated to help you find people who are buying or selling Bitcoins near your location.
See how simple the above the fold section is? A very clear benefit, very specific features (7757 cities, 240 countries....). There is however one thing I think they could have done better. Can you see it?
The call to action.
There seems to be two calls to action here, which may confuse the visitor. One says "sign up free" which is pretty standard text and not that exciting. The other says "find offers" which is much better in my opinion since I understand what I'll get once I click the button. So if I could make one improvement to this page it would be to remove the "sign up free" CTA and leave only the "find offers" CTA.
That's all there is to it, hopefully you know understand how to lay out your homepage or landing page for your product. Now that we've covered all of the basics we're ready to move on to actions.
Chapter 9.3: There are four main marketing channels
In general there are four main marking channels we will use when promoting anything online. Each of these four channels can be divided into sub channels.
Organic traffic
Also known as "getting users for free". This is the science of getting people to your website without paying a dime. This channel incorporates everything that is related to SEO, content marketing and guest-posting on other blogs. All of which will be discussed later on.
Paid traffic
Also known as "paying for users". This channel is all about paid advertising. In this book we will cover how to use extremely cost-effective paid advertising on Google Adwords and Facebook.
Social marketing
This channel is all about word of mouth (WOM is short). In this section we will deal with how to get people talking about you on social networks, promote your site for you and also about how to get affiliates onboard.
Email marketing
My personal favorite. Email is probably the most powerful marketing tool you can have, but you need to know how to use it effectively. How to build a super-focused email list, how to communicate with your subscribers, what to send, when to send, and a lot more will be covered in this section.
Homework - Craft Your Marketing Plan and Sales Page
I know, I know, you want to start marketing already. But hold your horses! We have to finish the planning phase before creating any online campaign. The thing is that if you don't take the time to figure out the stuff we've talked about, your ads and other marketing efforts will be pretty much useless. So here's what I want you to do today:
- Answer the three questions about your product (what problem does it solve, what are its features and what are it benefits). List at least three benefits and three features.
- Use PersonaDo to characterize your target audience. Create at least three different personas and decide which one of them is the most relevant to target initially.
- Use a software like LucidCharts to create a wireframe of your landing page or homepage. Follow the AIDA structure we went through.
- Bring your website to life either by designing and coding it yourself or hiring a freelancer to do it for you. You can also use website builders like instapage, wix and others to create it yourself without any prior knowledge.
- If you already have a website/product make sure you have Google Analytics installed. Afterwards make sure to enable Demographics and Interests as explained here.
IMPORTANT! You should only carry out these steps after completing successfully the first two parts of this book.
Why?
Because you don't want to do all of this work and then discover that there's no need for your product. The lean testing methods explained earlier in this book are here to protect you from spending time and money you do not need to spend.
Good luck and I'll see you in the next chapter.
