Last week I attended James Schramko's SuperFastBusinessconference in Manly, Sydney Australia.
James has run a yearly event in Australia for seven years in a row. The events are always a great way to reconnect with the local community and catch up on what people are getting results with.
This year the seminar featured a range of presentations over two days from local and a few overseas speakers. I was most excited to hear James talk about what he is up to and also catch up with Andre Chaperon, an email autoresponder expert who has been working online for as long as I have.
Despite being in the email marketing game for as long as I have been blogging, Andre has never done a conference presentation because he is a serious introvert (I think he gets anxiety about it). This event was, and I quote Andre “the first and last time he will ever present on stage”.
In case you have never heard of Andre or his absolutely fundamental email marketing techniques, you can listen to the podcast interview I did with him here –
What Were The Biggest Takeaway Lessons?
I figured to help my fellow EJ Insiders I would share with you some of the biggest lessons I took away from the event.
There were three key themes this year, which very much represent the current trends online for getting traffic and making sales.
1. Podcasting
James opened the event talking about how he has simplified his business over the previous year to give himself more time to surf (James constantly talked about surfing during the whole event!).
James said podcasting is a major part of his strategy. He has four podcasts running now, three of them are business focused and conducted with co-hosts. James didn't really explain anything new or different about podcasting, just that he was focusing on it as a key tool for connecting with new people (prospects).
2. Webinars
Taki Moore did one of the best presentations about his webinar formula. His presentation was more strategic than tactical, although he did present a nice overall framework for selling with a podcast.
The framework focused on a one hour long presentation, broken down like this –
- 10 minutes for an introduction
- 35 minutes for content
- 15 minutes for the offer
Taki suggested you have no more than three core content lessons and do not try and teach too much. He also pointed out how most people have no problem doing the content part of the webinar, but really struggled with the “pitch” or offer. He made a good suggestion about seeding the fact you are going to make an offer throughout the webinar, so when you reach the end it's more natural and there is no “shock” as you switch modes.
3. Facebook Ads
Facebook ads is by far the “hot” traffic source right now that everyone is talking about. Thanks to the incredible amount of detailed targeting you can do with the platform, you can keep ad costs down by focusing on highly targeted groups of people.
Not that I am in any way qualified to comment on this, but I will: If you do any stock market investing, Facebook is a company I would seriously consider investing in – I am! There must be so much money flowing to the company right now as new people discover how good the advertising platform is.
Keith Kranc did one of several presentations at the event that covered Facebook Ads. He made a really important point that if you want to advertise on mobile platforms, Facebook is by the best option.
Think about it – a sponsored post that goes on your Facebook timeline works really well on the mobile version of Facebook. It looks like any other content in your timeline, which presents really well on the Facebook App for smartphones.
Keith suggested you look at Facebook ads as not just a pure selling tool or a pure lead capture tool, but also as a way to keep connecting with your audience by sharing blog posts.
He recommends spending about 10% to 20% of your ad budget on sharing your best blog posts, which keeps you top of mind with your existing contacts, brings new people to you and doesn't appear at all like an advertisement. If your blog has an optin form on it (which it should!), then you can capture optins with this method too.
The other 80% of your ad budget should be spent on making offers to specific segments, which take people to landing pages where you can move people through an email gauntlet (an auto response email series designed to engage and presell your product or service).
What Does This Mean For Blogs?
The one really big thing I noticed that no matter what the technique, everyone talked about having an authority site – your blog, as the center of everything.
You use Facebook ads to share blog content which gets people to sign up to a webinar. You use a podcast to bring people back to your blog to sign up for a webinar. Those are two possible pathways, which clearly many of the presenters on stage were using and recommending.
This really made me see how important it is you get your blog structure right from day one. Since everything goes back to your blog, you need to make sure your blog does what it's supposed to do – build trust and move a person from visitor to prospect to customer.
Luckily as an EJ Insider, you have the advantage of a coaching program focused entirely on blogging 🙂
That's it for my wrap-up of the event. If you'd like any more details just hit reply and I'm happy to share.
Have a productive week!
Yaro
