Now That's a Reward! What we all need is to know our audience and how they want to be rewarded. We are in a different world than we were 10 years ago. We have been talking about microtargeting for years. We just didn't know it until we experienced it. Targeted advertising, based on personal preferences, social media engagement, mobile and tablet usage, and a host of other factors, is at the forefront of how people are spending their time online. If you are looking for new customers or looking to convert current ones, you need to ask your questions to your audience before your ask them for their wallet. You have to know where they are and what they are doing and what they will respond to. Do not send a message in a bottle—you have to speak their language before you can hope for a reply. As we discussed in the previous chapter, people aren't being led; they are being sold. They are watching too much television and reading too many magazine articles. They are tired of advertisers trying to buy their engagement. It has to be part of their natural flow. It used to be that an advertiser paid a percentage of sales of a product and then was sold on branding and advertising. Advertising was something they had to get used to and get acclimated to. Consumers had a choice in products, and they usually found the best ones that appealed to them. Now, when you go into Target and find something you like and love, you want more of it, so you look on Amazon for it. Now You've Got It! To get an idea of how quickly things are moving online, the Internet Retailer Industry Guide says that in 2013 the e-commerce industry grew by 9.8 percent. That's the biggest rate in 10 years. During this 10-year period the market for e-commerce sales jumped more than 50 percent. These numbers reflect a shift in consumer behavior, one that is happening quicker than ever before. We are becoming a generation of buyers. We used to say that we didn't like the hard sell. Now we like to be asked what our preferences are and given the opportunity to make an educated buying decision. We know more about how to shop. So why do you think that marketers are suddenly jumping on the e-commerce bandwagon? Because consumers are using their technology to find the right products to fit their needs and desires. If your product fits in with what people want and you can capture their attention in a way they want to be advertised to, you will be rewarded with sales and growth. There is a huge opportunity for you to get in on this. How big a market is this? As you can see from the market figures above, it is huge. The numbers get bigger each month. That means if you master the art of finding new products that your audience will love, you have access to hundreds of thousands of consumers, not millions or tens of thousands. But the same rule applies as it does to any business—the bigger the market, the higher the gross margin for you. Let's look at an example. Let's say you are in the toy business, the toy business online. Let's say you have a good product with 20 percent gross margin and want to make $100 per lead, and you have 20,000 leads. That is $2,000,000 in gross profit. Now, if you send out 500 e-mails per month and get a 5 percent response, that means you will get 500 sales. That is 500 sales per month at $100 per sale and a gross profit of $50,000. That's not bad for less than $200 in mailing expenses. I love these kinds of numbers, and when you are a newbie, they are a great incentive. That's not my problem—I have them. My problem is not getting them. You can always find someone to do the dirty work for you. I am here to tell you that if you are going to get into this business, you need to learn how to find and create the products that will get you the best ROI for the time and money you have to invest in this business. We are not talking about the toy business anymore, although it is relevant to this conversation. We are talking about the broader market and the opportunity that there is in capturing this market. The toy industry has shrunk over the years, not because of toys not being interesting or things of value, but because people are spending money on things they consider more valuable than toys. So when we talk about this business, we are talking about other things: shoes, handbags, sunglasses, laptops, tablets, electronics, smartphones, you name it. So let's say you are working on launching the new iPad. The numbers on that product alone are mind-blowing. As you know by now, Apple products average 100,000 units per day. This means that on average, Apple sells two iPads every single minute of every single day. That's about one iPad every two seconds or 100 per minute. Think about that for a moment. If that is true, how can you not take advantage of it and do whatever you can to get your message out to as many people as possible? How Are You Using These Numbers? Let me give you an example of what is possible. Let's say that you are selling $1,000 products, which may seem odd, but I am giving you a figure to prove my point. If you are at 50 percent gross margin, you need to sell 20,000 of them to make a decent gross profit of $200,000. At five to 10 percent response, that's 250 to 500 sales. Of those 250 sales, 80 are leads and 180 are just additional sales. So you need 20,000 of those $1,000 products and a good product to make a good profit. The key is to understand that there is a huge opportunity to capture a market that is bigger than it ever has been and easier than it ever has been to break into. Your job is to find products that will fit into this massive market and develop a strategy to get them in front of this large audience. To get you started, here are some ideas that have the potential to be very profitable: • Create a newsletter series about your industry. • Create a webinar series about your industry. • Write e-books that will help people in your industry. • Create audio podcasts that talk about the industry. • Write a weekly blog that talks about your industry. • Develop and run training videos that go over industry basics and industry related topics. • Develop and run social media content that helps to educate your audience. • Sell an online course on your industry. • Sell a group on industry-specific topics and resources. • Create a web site on a specific industry. • Create an app to be available on the mobile platform for a specific industry. As you can see, the possibilities are endless. I do not know how much of this you know, but it is the beauty of what we are doing here. No matter what the skill level or how you got to where you are, we are providing the tools for you to take what you already know and what you are learning and make it a profitable business. The goal of any campaign is to make the customer feel that you are a leader and you have something that fits their interest or can help them solve a problem they have. You should not only take their money but they should be so engaged with what you have to offer that they want to tell everyone about it. How Do You Get Started? There is a simple way to find products that have potential for your audience. This is called keyword research. This is a critical component for any business. It should be used in everything you do, especially your web marketing. You may not realize this, but a lot of people use it and get good results using it. What Is Keyword Research? The idea is to go after the right keywords and find products that fit your ideal customer profile. If you are a consultant in the toy business and you know your ideal customer profile, you have the ideal client you want to reach, and you have a target market of 5,000 adults in the country with an annual income of $100,000, which you know to be true, and you know who has children and has interest in all things pertaining to children's toys, you have an opportunity to make $150,000 in sales in a year. You have the audience and you know what they are going to buy. You have the ideal consumer. You also know what to do about it. You can easily find a keyword database that will help you figure out what you are going to do next. The reason for this is that keywords can help you find a market you have not been able to tap into before. You are looking at the audience that has been the toughest one to crack. You want to get in front of a key audience, but they have not been available in your audience before. You can now build that audience, and you can easily develop strategies to build revenue streams based on those keywords. How Do I Do This? The best thing to do is to create a list of questions that you have about your industry. These questions will help you identify a target audience. Let's say you are in the food industry. You ask your customers, "How would you rate the quality of your grocery store's food preparation? Do you enjoy the fruits and vegetables you