Going Live With Your Business

Clayton Makepeace has a strategy that his largest client has used to bring in $2.5 million in sales in 24 hours. And it generated $16 million in sales in a single month.

Though it’s not a traditional sales process or marketing campaign, direct-response marketing is at its heart. And it leverages the best parts of the Web — what Clayton calls the Internet’s “5 Golden Advantages”:

1. The emotional connection you can forge with your prospects and customers by telling compelling stories and providing valuable advice and information. (Online, you do it through e-mail newsletters, videos, blogs, and more.)

2. The power of your online community. People love to hang out with others like themselves. So you give them a place to hang out (where you can engage them with valuable content and sales messages). It could be a website, social network, blog, or e-newsletter.

3. The ability to contact your prospects and customers via e-mail as much as you want, whenever you want. There are no postage costs — and delivery is instant.

4. The capability to make limited-time-only offers and show your prospects how close the deadline is getting by using a countdown clock. (Visible deadlines trigger massive buying action.)

5. The capacity to react instantly to what’s going on right now, whether it’s in your business or industry or the national news. This “newsiness,” said Clayton in his Bootcamp presentation yesterday, “intensifies prospects’ engagement.”

The Online Profit Multiplier

Many Internet marketers go about building a customer base the wrong way, said Clayton. They send out the same “buy something” message every day. This turns off new prospects, people who just signed up to receive e-mails from them — and they opt out.

That’s where his strategy — the Online Profit Multiplier — comes in.

The Online Profit Multiplier begins with engagement — with an e-mailed customer-centric conversation. (What can we do for you? What do you need? What frustrates you? We’re here to help.)

This goes on for a week to 10 days, said Clayton.

Then there is an invitation to an event. (I know what you need. And I’ve got it. You talked, we listened. We’re going to host an event on such and such a date. Registration is free — but you must sign up by the deadline.) This goes on for five days.

The event itself could be presented in several different formats: a teleseminar (audio only), a PowerPoint-driven webinar, or a video webcast. And the content could be structured as “eavesdropping” on a private conversation, as news, as an expose, as a town meeting, or as a Q&A session.

You can’t skimp on quality with your event, or everything you’ve done up to this point — and everything you do after — will have been for nothing. And it must be live, a one-time-only event, said Clayton. Because that:

• Puts a limit on how many can attend.

• Requires your prospects to act before a certain date.

• Requires your prospects to make a commitment.

By the time the event rolls around, half a month has gone by. And in that time, you haven’t send out any sales messages to your new prospects. You look like somebody trying to help them. And you are — because you’ve been delivering valuable info. Your prospects are thinking, “This guy is great,” said Clayton.

Meanwhile, by keeping them engaged, you’re also priming them to take action.

Now it’s time to make the sale — starting with an e-mail sent immediately after the event. And with follow-up e-mails for the next several weeks.

Clayton calls the Online Profit Multiplier the most powerful strategy he’s used in his 37-year marketing career to generate sales. It can:

1. Attract more qualified prospects.
2. Transform more prospects into paying customers.
3. Help get your customers to buy more often.
4. Convince your customers to make ever-larger purchases.
5. Persuade your customers to stick with you longer.

In fact, said Clayton, the level of response you can expect with the Online Profit Multiplier has been unheard of in the marketing industry.

And although the results he reported from his biggest client were from a file with 500,000 names, the exact same techniques can be used no matter what the size of your e-mail subscriber list is.

If you have no list? Identify other sites and publications in your niche. And offer them a percentage of sales in return for access to their subscriber names.