Why Getting More Traffic Might Be the WRONG Thing To Focus On For You!

There are fundamental things we need to focus on when building our business.   As marketers, we get distracted and overwhelmed by all the different marketing tactics, strategies, gimmicks, tools, plug-ins.  We start to lose our focus on what's really important.  I like to train on getting back to fundamentals because I understand how important fundamentals are.  They're much more important than any of the other tactics or tools that you can put on top of the fundamentals.

I'm going to share a clever analogy I heard recently from Dan Kennedy about Superman and Batman:

Batman is unique in that he's a regular man. He doesn't have any superpowers. He dresses up in a costume, he has his tools, his bat-cave, his bat-mobile and other gadgets.  But he bleeds, he can get hurt, he ages, he dies; he's a regular guy with awesome tools.  

Superman, on the other hand, is very different with his intrinsic super powers - he doesn't age, he has super strength, he has super speed.  He doesn't need any tools.  He's Superman.

What would you rather be?  Who would you rather be?  

You need to learn the fundamentals.  If you're not making money in your business it's because you're missing some of the fundamental skills.  It's not because you don't understand wordpress, it's not because you don't know how to market on facebook, it's not because you don't have all the latest plug-ins or that your blog doesn't look top notch.  If you're not making money in your business it's because you're missing some of the fundamental skills.  That's what you need to think about and where you need to focus all your energy right now.  Then when you have your foundations in place you can start adding all the tools to multiply your results.

I hope this makes sense because this is going to be a breakthrough for you right now if you apply and run with it.

When I was asking myself what the fundamental principles people need to learn were, I looked at my business experiences and saw it was in the breakthroughs.  The breakthroughs had nothing to do with wordpress, with plug-ings and they had nothing to do with learning strategies.

The real breakthroughs are what I'm going to share with you.  The majority of your time, energy, and money are needed to master these skills.

Fundamental Principles

1. Your Value

a) Discover what your unique skills, talents, and experiences are.  You need to own your own unique value.  Many don't know what their unique value is.  Many don't know what their unique message is, what their perspective is, what their unique skills, talents, and experiences are that they can use to leverage.  This is useful to not only position yourself in the market place as a unique individual to separate yourself from the competition but also to use those skills, talents and experience to get better results.

Unfortunately, a lot of entrepreneurs are doing things in their business that they're not very strong at.  That's fine - we should improve on our weaknesses but where are you going to get quicker and better results? From working on your weaknesses or working with your strengths?  If I'm starting a business I'm going to work on my strengths to get much better, quicker results.  I'll get someone else to do the things I'm weak at.  It's great to work on your weaknesses but you need to focus on your strengths if you want results.  Are you clear on what your unique skills, talents and experiences are?  Right now are you using those in your business?

When I was trying to build my network marketing business earlier in life I was trying to be somebody I was not - I was trying to model and duplicate my upline.  My upline was a typical A-type driver personality who was awesome at meeting strangers and getting phone numbers from strangers.  He could walk into an elevator with 5 people and walk out with 3 phone numbers.  This was something that was a weakness of mine, it wasn't natural for me and it took me 5 years to work on and develop that skill. 

I tapped into my strengths and my talents and my skills when I got involved in learning marketing and online marketing, I realized this was a talent of mine and within 3 months I had my first 5 figure month.  Do you see the difference?  Big difference.  If you want results and are unclear on your strengths you need to take some personality profiles.  Just go online and search to find many personality profile tests.  

b) Value you bring to marketplace in your particular niche.  You need to be an expert.  When we talk about positioning yourself as an expert in the network marketing niche, when we're talking about attraction marketing that doesn't mean you fake it 'til you make it - that doesn't mean you position yourself as a fake expert.  It means you need to become an expert.  Whatever niche or industry you're going to work in you need to become an expert in that industry you need to learn everything you can about that business, about that industry, that market, that niche. No excuses.

There's no halfway about this, you can't fake this.  You need to devote yourself to becoming a professional. Are you serious about building a network marketing business?  Are you serious about building an online business? Or is it something that you're just kinda trying out to see if it kinda works?  It won't work if you're not an expert if you don't devote yourself 110%.

If you wanted to become a doctor or dentist would you just kinda dip your toe in to see if it works? No, you'd commit yourself to becoming an expert, you'd have certain grades and certain achievements to master before you can become a doctor.  You have to look at this business or any other business in the same way.  You have to become an expert so you can bring value to the marketplace so you can get paid.

If you're brand new to the industry and feel like you're not an expert you're right, you're not an expert.  That's fine because you can change that in a matter of weeks.  Just hop on some of our webinars, dedicate yourself, commit yourself to training and learning and mastering what we're teaching.  All you need to do is know more than your prospect and you're an expert.  Don't feel like you need to be a seven figure earner.  You just need to know what you're talking about.

2. Learning Direct Response Marketing Fundamentals

When I discovered direct response marketing I started learning from Dan Kennedy.  Dan Kennedy has recently put out a new free video training series. I highly recommend learning from Dan Kennedy.

Think about this when you're on the phone with a prospect, when you"re making a video, writing an article, when you're creating a sales page, when you're creating content, putting a blog together...you need to learn these rules:

a) There's always going to be an offer for all of your marketing.  

b) There's always a strong reason to respond. It's got to be a specific strong reason that hits some sort of pain that you're prospect is feeling.  It pulls your prospect away from pain towards pleasure. Think of your prospect as a lazy, overweight potato chip eating, beer drinking, sloth sitting on the couch  watching your commercial on TV and the phone is way across the room and somehow you've got to get this lazy sloth off the couch walk across the room and pick up the phone to call to buy your product.  There must be a strong reason to respond.  That's how you have to think about your sales and marketing.  It's got to have a strong reason to respond.

c) Clear Instructions / Directions

We did a recent split test on a capture page where we changed two words. Instead of "opt-in below" we said "put your name and email address below".  We increased conversions by 35%.  Why? It's much clearer and easier to understand when we said "put your name and email address", then when we said "opt-in" because we realized not everyone knows what that means.  Make your instructions specific and clear.  

d) Always be measuring and tracking so you know what's working and what's not.  That's a fundamental principle of marketing.

e) Branding as a By-Product

Never do any marketing focused solely on branding. Leave that for the big corporations with the deep pockets.  That's what we see all the time with the magazine ads, the billboards, the big banners online.    When we look at McDonald's, BMW, Coca-Cola - that's what we think of as good marketing.  Then we see these small business owners, and entrepeneurs spending tens of thousands of dollars on branding style marketing when they don't have the deep pockets to make that type of marketing work.  You need to understand direct response fundamentals because you can't waste your money on branding.  Branding is a by-product of direct response marketing.

f) There will always be follow up.  This is self explanatory.  Follow up.  

g) Results Rule

The only thing that matters is results and if you're tracking and measuring you know what works and what doesn't.  If somebody comes up to us and says, "Hey we've got this great idea, you guys should try this", our first question always is:  What are your results?

Ideas are great, we get them all the time - the majority of them are crap.  The only thing that matters is results.  Have you tested it?  Don't go with some crazy idea you have and spend the next 3 months putting up some sales funnel because you think this idea is going to work.  Put up something really quick - get a test out to see if it's even going to work because the only thing that matters is results.

Ok, we've covered Value and Direct Response.   Having those two things in place will allow you to have a breakthrough in your business.  Stop for minute and ask yourself if you've mastered these two things first.  Have I got this down?  If not these are the things you need to work on.  Master them.

The third fundamental principle you must have in your business is:

3. Communication and Sales Skills

You need to have strong communication, sales, presentation skills and the ability to influence people.  How strong are your communication skills right now?  Have you mastered this?  If not, this is what you need to work on.  It doesn't matter how much traffic you get ... there are those in MLSP who have tons and tons of leads but they're not the top recruiters in MLSP.  Converting people into sales - that's what counts. 

This means you understand how to build rapport with your prospect.  It applies to all mediums you're using to communicate: in person, in video, in meetings, on stage, on a webinar, and sales videos.  The medium doesn't matter because once you master the skill you can use any medium you choose.  This is why people struggle - they think if they work on the medium they're going to get the results.  That's not true - develop the fundamentals first then figure out the medium you're going to use. Important aspects of strong communication skills:

    a) rapport

    b) ability to qualify and ask questions: dig deeper into your prospects needs, wants, and desires.

    c) control : being able to lead a conversation when you're talking to a prospect, being able to    lead a viewer, a visitor, or an attendee. How do you lead your prospect through your website or     through your sales funnel or through your video?  How do you lead through your communication     skills?

    d) authority: the ability to project authority, expertise and confidence through your     communications.

Have you nailed these things?  Have you mastered them? These are the things you need to focus on.  These are the things that are going to make you big money.  You want to be like the leaders in this industry? You want to be a successful entrepreneur?  These are the things you need to focus on.

Value, Direct Response and Communications.  These are the big secrets I've revealed to you -  the big breakthroughs that I've had in my business.  These are the big secrets that are going to give you success and that are responsible for success for the majority of entrepreneurs and top producers that you know in this industry.  These are the skills.  Develop these skills and then it doesn't matter what medium you choose to use.  

I hope you apply this in your business moving forward today and really start focusing on the fundamentals.  Don't get lost in the information overload and all the techniques and tactics and strategies.  All that is are great - you need to have those things.  You want to have more leads you can handle, you want more traffic to your website - all are great but don't lose sight that these fundamental principles are the skills that you need to develop and those other things will not replace these skills.

Norbert Orlewicz