You’ve probably typed a search term into your favorite engine and clicked an ad to discover a site with absolutely no information, but tons and tons of links. These sites are called link farms and are part of the global campaign to fool search engines. The business model is pretty simple; an unsuspecting web browser stumbles on their link farming site and they either:

1.    Sell ad space on the site

2.    Redirect traffic to a paying site

3.    Plant some nasty stuff on your computer like spyware or viruses.

There’s an entire industry of enterprising web wizards that do this with pay per click campaigns. If you can traffic at $0.05 per click and sell it at $0.10 per click, you can run that engine forever and constantly make money more money. All those nickels can add up to a lot of money and often these methods fuel some of the dirty corners of the internet.

Another dirty tactic is called typosquatting, or using a slight variation of a web site’s address to fool you into a site that’s not what you expected. www.bankrate.com is a useful site full of financial information, www.bankrait.com is a link farm.

Other sneaky tactics include buying up people’s domain names the second they expire, filling forums and comments with spam links, and luring traffic with offers that are too good to be true.

I read recently that an enterprising pharmaceutical spammer can make up to $4000/day selling Viagra. With that much money out there, it’s unlikely to see us winning the spam war any time soon. Google will keep making tweaks to the search engine model and spammers will keep tweaking their business model to stay ahead.

What Does This Mean For The Good Guys?
Much like the battle between bacteria and anti-bacterial soap, this constant back-and-forth war between Search Engines and spammers means both have gotten really sophisticated. The intricacies of PageRank and link building techniques are getting too complicated for mortals.

It’s not just that techniques in SEO that worked two years ago stopped working, it’s that they can be very detrimental to your business. Google and the other search engines are doing a pretty good job of blacklisting the IP addresses and business names of known spammers and God help you if you end up on those lists.

Focus on Being a Productive Member of the Web Team
Bottom line: You’re not sophisticated enough to do battle on the same playing field as professional link farmers, spammers, and pay per click arbitragers. Just like you wouldn’t try to place bets against professional currency speculators or Wall Street bond wizards, going head to head with professional spammers is a losing battle.

What you do have at your disposal is your deep understanding of your product or service. If you’re a real estate agent, take the time to produce some useful videos about buying foreclosures or managing a fix and flip. If you’re an attorney, spend time answering basic legal questions in an honest and useful way. If you run an organic skin care company, teach people how to take care of their skin and avoid harmful chemicals. Spammers may be very good at fooling search engines, but Google always finds ways to highlight honest links built by real people around quality content. And the goal of every search engine is to find more of your content and less spam. You can win that battle.

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Many businesses aren’t global by definition. Realtors, Chiropractors, Insurance agents, Restaurants, Hair Stylists, and many other local service providers count on local traffic for their business. It used to be very hard for local businesses to compete with global search giants, Pottery Barn would beat out any local furniture store, and what restaurant could compete with Olive Garden. Luckily, the search engines have been working hard to solve the problem of directing local traffic to local businesses. Here’s how to win the local search game.

Post your information on local search engines
The local search engines like Dexknows.com often search each other’s indexes and therefore share information. Larger search engines like infoUSA.com or Localeze.com also share information through data exchange or syndication. This information gets passed onto larger search engines like Yahoo Local profile and Google Local Business Listings. So start by getting your business or service listed in as many local search engines as you can find (hint: they advertise on local TV stations and Billboards). Most of these listings will be free or a have a very minimal charge. This will cause a trickle up effect to the larger searches.

Other great location specific search engines are Yelp.com, Superpages.com, Marchex’s OpenList Network.

Find a way into the local blogs
Many bloggers focus on a neighborhood like Highlands, or very small region like Northwest Denver. These are great resources for local listings. To find these blogs try a basic search like Denver blog or Littleton Blog.

These are very well indexed by search engines for a specific location because they mention the neighborhood so many times. Businesses that are mentioned or linked in these blogs have a very high relevancy and trust factor in the local search engine rankings.

Local directories
Local directories are also well indexed by search engines and are highly relevant to cities or neighborhoods. The best kind of directories are edited by humans because they tend to have less spam than the free-for-all types. Best of the Web is a great example of a local directory, or you can look to Yahoo’s Regional Directory. Try looking for Denver directory or Colorado directory to find more.

Be ruthless about your profile
Do frequent searches in your area and see what turns up for you. Many directories will allow you to edit your profile, so make sure you have your business name, address, and phone number correct wherever you can find it.

Take some time to carefully craft the description of your service. Use comfortable language and a touch of levity to make your Restaurant or Health Clinic stand out among the other choices. Also, take time to get a professional photograph taken and include in any directories that will let you. People will notice a photo and often choose your smiling face over the no-name service just above you in the rankings.

Local search is a huge growing business. Instead of running a very expensive phone book ad, take a few hours to explore what’s out there in local search, you’ll be amazed at the results.

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So Viacom is suing YouTube for a Billion dollars. Yes, that’s billion with a giant capital “B.” Basically that’s 6 times Viacom’s annual revenue and about 2/3 of what Google paid when they bought YouTube a few years back. Viacom is suing YouTube because someone discovered that the managers and employees of YouTube were turning a blind eye to the copyrighted material that was being uploaded to the site. And because this is the 21st century, the lawsuit is well documented with email correspondence between the guilty parties. (Note to self… be careful what you email).

Viacom is the media giant that owns MTV networks, Paramount Pictures, and among other things The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Think back to when you first laughed at a Daily Show clip. If you’re like millions of others, you discovered that clip on YouTube; probably because it was forwarded to you buy someone else who discovered it on YouTube. Clips of the South Park, snippets of Saturday Night Live, and favorite bits of movies were what made YouTube so popular in the beginning. Instead of saying “…do you see the Natalie Portman rap song?” you could queue it up on YouTube and share.

So Viacom’s lawsuit is partly about damages, but it’s also about profit sharing. Viacom’s content helped YouTube’s rise to online media dominance. But let’s not forget the integral role that YouTube played in bringing a mass audience to The Daily Show, or reminding a generation that Music Videos could be cool again. YouTube made Viacom a ton of money as Viacom was making YouTube famous.

Suing People is Not a Long Term Business Model
There’s a special circle of Hell reserved for companies who sue the pants off the groups that make them money. Currently, the RIAA and MPAA – Recording Industry and Motion Picture Associations of America – are filling up that circle for driving fans into Bankruptcy, shutting down Napster, and chasing The Pirate Bay across Europe. There’s a sad irony to the exchange and it feels like everyone sees it, but that doesn’t stop the lawsuits. It seems when you have money and law on your side, there’s no stopping to notice the scorched earth behind you.

Embrace Sharing
On the flip side, there are the bright shining stars that recognize how powerful the idea of sharing can be. Wilco was one of the first bands to put the entire album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot online for download and sharing. It’s still their number one selling album and the perfect combination of beautiful pop songs and fan-centric generosity made them internationally famous. Glee, the new Fox TV show about high school show choir used YouTube and social media to create an enormous amount of buzz before the show was even aired. It quickly became one of the most talked about and critically acclaimed shows of the year. Paranormal Activity, made for $10,000, used social media buzz and shared clips to generate $62 million in ticket sales.

By embracing the universal human desire to share cool stuff with each other, those who get it will continue to thrive. Those who don’t get it deserve their hellish time battling it out in court.

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I first discovered podcasting four years ago and was amazed at the wealth of really high quality content for free. The creators all shared a commitment to keep the medium free. “A business model will emerge,” became the mantra for the first generation of podcasters.

David Spark wrote a fascinating article about the 9 successful business models for podcasting. While much of the podcasting world is still a labor of love, some enterprising podcasters are making a very good living from their content. Here’s a quick summary of the 9 models David identified. You can read the article here

1.    Got audience? We’ll get you sponsors – podcast networks like Mevio, Podtrac, and Wizard Media will do the legwork and find sponsors to include in your content.

2.    Get your own sponsors – If you’re willing to shop for and manage your own sponsors, you can make additional revenue and be more in control of your content.

3.    Be like public TV, beg for donations – podcasting is expensive and passionate listeners will often help out with the costs.

4.    Give some away free, charge for the rest – Some podcasts will give away every other show or one show a month and charge a nominal fee for access to the other shows.

5.    Partial show free, full show paid – the first 15 minutes are free, and you pay for the remaining amount.

6.    Build your own media network of programming and sell advertising against it – similar to building a radio network, but much less expensive. Handpick podcasts that fit an overall theme and sell targeted advertising.

7.    Build your brand to sell your services – Duct tape marketing podcast, book, blog etc is a great example of how a podcast can help drive sales of a book and consulting organization.

8.    Sell an iPhone app along with your podcast – Elsie Escobar sells a $3.99 iPhone app to go along with her free yoga podcast.

9.    Integrate sponsorship with the show’s editorial – Audible sponsorship fits right alongside of book recommendations in Slate’s Culture Gabfest.

What’s interesting is that it wasn’t just one business model that emerged but many different ones. Most are tweaks of existing models that exist in the radio, television, or keynote speaking world. Others, like the iPhone app, use technology that was invented after podcasting started.

It’s encouraging to see people who are passionate about creating content take a leap of faith and find a way to make their passion pay. Leo Laport, runner of the TWiT network of podcasts, reported that he made $1.5million in revenue. Not bad for a guy who started a few years ago in his basement with some audio equipment and a Skype connection.

Transplanting Business Models
Clayton Christensen, author of the Innovators Dilemma, once said there are only a few business models in the world. As we explore new content creation techniques like Twitter, and new technologies like netbooks and smartphones, it is useful to pay attention to reliable business models and how they can be transplanted into the new content forms.

It’s also worth paying attention to the models that no longer work as well. Network TV advertising has slumped in the past decade. Fewer people are watching prime-time network TV and the mass-media audience is frequently splintered into more available shows and distribution techniques like Hulu. Product placements, like Pepsi billboards in a movie, are also getting a bit stale. But announcer sponsorships, like the ones in old-time-radio, are making a real comeback in syndicated radio and podcasting.

Take some time to explore some of the business models above and see if there’s a way to work them into your marketing efforts. You may be surprised at the business models that emerge.

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Two exiting new technology products launched this week and took very different approaches to marketing.

Windows 7 is the long awaited new operating system from Microsoft. Because Vista, the previous operating system was a complete mess, Microsoft really wanted to hit it out of the park with Windows 7.

Cute is the New Black
They launched a TV ad campaign with Kylie, a 4 and a half year old self-described PC girl. She finds happy words and pictures of bunnies her dad’s PC and quickly makes a slide show complete with Rocky music. The ad is sickeningly sweet and goes right for our emotional responses. We all know that cute sells, but I can’t help feeling this is a bit much.

Viral. Like Swine Flu
Microsoft also made an attempt at viral marketing with its “host a Windows 7 party” campaign. Yes, it really is as dorky as it sounds. Sign up and Microsoft will send you Windows 7 napkins, Windows 7 gift bags, Windows 7 balloons. Invite your friends over for a party to celebrate the launch of Windows 7 and have fun installing it on laptops and troubleshooting together.

“Wanna come to my Windows 7 release party?”

“No.”

The concept was certainly viral, but not in the way Microsoft had hoped. Pretty soon, it was every tech reporter and blogger’s favorite thing to cringe about. Someone dubbed over the release party video with a censor bleep and created a hysterically dirty version. Other people ordered the kits and threw parties to mock Microsoft. It created a lot of buzz, but at what cost?

Ride the Wave
Around the same time, Google launched Wave. Wave is a new web platform that lets you collaborate with people in real time on a document. The idea is it replaces the back and forth nature of email and gives you a really good way to create something in a team.

Google realized a couple things:

1.    Wave is full of bugs  and isn’t really ready for mainstream yet.

2.    Wave is very hard to describe and a bit counter intuitive to understand.

3.    Wave, like a telephone, requires other people in the network to collaborate with.

Google’s approach was different. They released an early beta project to a very few selected technology reporters, developers, and geek influencers to get them playing with the project. They gave them each 20 invite recommendations (yes, you still have to be chosen by the Wave committee). Basically, they handpicked a buzz group to be excited about their product. It may seem a bit heavy handed by Google, but they are also paying close attention to the feedback they’re getting. The technology group that they hand selected would are also the types of early adopters who help grow and shape a product in its infancy. Buzz also goes hand-in-hand with a community of users who can make your product great.

Microsoft’s approach is a classic push marketing model. We’re not sure we need a new version of Windows, lord knows the last upgrade was a mistake. So Microsoft had to saturate the advertising market and use all sorts of gimmicks to make us pay attention. We’re left with a feeling in our gut that Microsoft is desperate for our money which makes us a bit less likely to buy.

By limiting its user base to a select few and creating an exclusive kind of buzz, Google has created a classic pull market. People are excited for Wave invites and will take the time to really play with the technology and find good uses for it, because they’re one of the chosen few.

Push vs. Pull
In online marketing, the classic push model is flashy banner ads, spam emails, not-so-subtle twitter posts, etc. The pull model takes more work. You have to fill your site with good content, write interesting articles, and give your customers something special to discover and share with their friends. It takes more work, but in the long run, your customers will respect you more.

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There’s a great little mp3 player by SanDisk; 4gig capacity, ultra small, perfect for the gym, and it costs around $50. A bunch of tech reviewers put it on their top choice lists. There’s one small snag, it slightly distorts the music. There’s an ever-so-slight pitch change, nearly impossible to hear with the naked ear, but pretty noticeable when you hook it up to sensitive audio equipment.

So a hand full of buyers complained on the SanDisk forums. “How dare they release a shoddy product!” “When are you going to fix this?” SanDisk responded to this small crowd of dissent – and I’m paraphrasing here – “uh, what did you expect, it’s 50 bucks?”

It’s not often that a major company comes out and says “you get what you pay for,” in fact, it’s unique enough to be a semi-inflammatory news story. But the phrase goes unsaid in almost all marketing. Buy a set of luggage at Wal-Mart and it falls apart in 6 months. Buy tools in the supermarket checkout lane and they snap when you’re trying to force that lug nut tight. Buy some discount chicken on special, and surprise, smells rotten the next day. Part of being an informed consumer is reading between the lines and making smart decisions.

A similar thing happens when you go shopping for services on the internet. Building custom websites, or exercising a Social Media Marketing program is very time consuming. It takes careful planning, and good systems in the background to make everything run smoothly. There are a handful of shortcuts, but at the end of the day, you’re trading your hard-earned money for someone else’s expertise and work.

Here’s a great list to use when you’re interviewing agencies:

-    Ask for Results
Ask every SEO agency you are evaluating for a list of top 3 Google rankings. They should be able to provide you with at least 50 top 3 rankings for competitive keywords. If they show you that they took a client to the first position for “red and blue table supplier in Denver, CO”, you know what to do.

-    Ask for References
The best SEO agencies will be happy to give you the contact information of at least 3 clients. Call them and ask them about their experience with the agency. Ask for specifics. “They are really cool” means nothing. Ask them how much their traffic increased, about their rankings and how responsive the agency is when they have problems.

-    Ask About Their Tactics
All SEOs have different tactics and do things in different order. Ask them if they are going to be creating content for you and what link building tactics they are going to use. Ask these questions in person or over the phone because if you send an email, they have time to do some research. You don’t want them to experiment new tactics with you; you want them to know exactly what they’re going to do for you.

-    Do They Speak “Geeky Language” or Business Language?
Do they talk about organic traffic and rankings only or do they also talk about revenues, profit and sales? The best SEOs are business people and understand that it’s all about business, not rankings.

Questions like this help you be an informed consumer when shopping for internet marketing services. The more you understand the process, the better choices you can make. Don’t get stuck on the receiving end of “uh, you get what you pay for!”

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As entrepreneurs, we almost never get it right from the start. Most of the ideas we bring into the world aren’t spectacular from the beginning. An idea may begin with “I want to run a bakery” and over time it evolves into “I want to sell organic, gluten free, cookies at local farmers’ markets,” and then evolves further into a delivering your organic, gluten free cookie dough directly to coffee shops and gourmet groceries every week.

In business, this is called the pivot. Taking your original idea and tweaking and modifying it in small, but profound ways. Imagine a basketball player with one foot firmly planted, but able to move the other to protect from the defense. Pivoting allows us to adapt our ideas to the market without throwing away our current businesses, and it’s one of the most important skills of 21st century business.

There are a few things that allow your company to pivot more effectively:

Build a Flexible Structure
Small teams are much more flexible than large departments. If you’re grouped into research, human resources, marketing, etc., it becomes a real challenge to turn the ship, even slightly. Even a small change can be like pulling teeth.

The most effective organizations manage small teams of 3-5 people and give them the tasks of “defining the problem” or “solving the problem we’ve defined.” Even if you’re working by yourself, don’t be afraid to share your ideas with small groups of friends and have them help you better define problems and solutions.

Shrink the Feedback Loop
One of the amazing things about the web is how quickly and easily we can get feedback from our customers. Whether it’s the “your product stopped working on Tuesday” variety, or the “this feature would really help out” kind of feedback; you can build a very direct relationship with customers early in the lifecycle of your product or service.

This is a fantastic reason for the “Ready, Fire, Aim” approach to delivering products. The quicker you get your products in the hands of customers, the quicker you can start to see where to pivot. 37Signals released Basecamp without the ability to bill. They figured, customers will use it for a month and that gives us 30 days to build a billing system. In those 30 days they got really useful feedback from their customers that helped them build a better product.

Find a Way to Track Non-Buyers
Sometimes the kind of feedback you need is from potential customers who didn’t buy your product. A great way to do this is exchange a free tip sheet, e-book, or video for an email address. That way you can start building a conversation with clients who didn’t buy right away and get an idea of what else they’re looking for. You can try out special offers to them, different price points, bonus material, etc. You’re also building a great list of potential clients for future pivots of your products.

Experiment with Different Ideas
The web also gives us great tools to experiment with different products or services. Google offers a free service that lets you show different pages to incoming traffic. Let’s say you want to experiment with your gluten free cookie dough and see if it sells better as a weekly service, or a case delivery. You can build two identical pages with slightly different offers and test to see which gets the best feedback. This allows us to explore our pivots without betting the company on them.

The key to running a 21st century business is to stay flexible, listen to your customers, and watch for opportunities to pivot.

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If you asked me what’s the main reason most companies don’t have as many customers as they want, I’d say that they don’t understand their customers.

Makes sense, doesn’t it? After all, how in the world can you sell something to someone you don’t understand? You can’t.

So, how do you get to know your customers? By creating an ideal customer profile.

The first thing you need to keep in mind is that not all your customers are the same, but you still need to create a persona that represents 70% of your customers. If you try to talk to a group of people on your website, you’ll most likely fail. But if you talk to that persona whose profile you created, your visitors will feel that you’re talking to them and they’ll be a lot more responsive.

So, how can you create an ideal client profile?

The first step is to create a document describing their ideal day. Make it as detailed as possible. These are some questions that will help you know your ideal customer better:

-    How old is she?
-    Where does she live?
-    Is she married? Divorced?
-    How many kids does she have?
-    How much does she make?
-    What does she spend her money on?
-    What is her average day like?
-    What does she have for breakfast?
-    Who does she have breakfast with?
-    What are her friends like?
-    What does her husband look like?
-    What movies does she like?
-    What kind of books does she read?
-    What does she do before going to bed at night?
-    Who does she admire? Why?

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. This exercise is so powerful that I wouldn’t even consider starting a marketing campaign without doing this first.

After you’re done with this exercise, I have another one for you. Do a profile explaining how this person makes buying decisions.

-    Does she buy online?
-    How does she do it? Does she use Google? Does she go to forums?
-    Is she an emotional or a logical buyer?
-    How will she use my product?
-    Does she do research before buying stuff? How does she do it? Does she use the Internet? How?
-    Who does the research? Who makes the final decision? Who has to approve that decision? Who influences in her decisions? Who does she justify her purchases with?
-    How important is price to her?
-    How important is quality to her?
-    Does she like getting products shipped to her or does she prefer to pick them up?
-    What would she use my product for? How often would she use it? Where would she use it? Who with?

By now you should have a very clear idea of who your ideal client is and it should be a lot easier to sell your products to her. Remember: identify what her hot buttons are (what motivates her to take action) and push them!

One last thing, when you write the copy for your site, write for Marie (don’t forget to name your ideal customer), not for a group of people. Use sentences like “our product will help you lose weight and feel more energized than ever before” instead of “our product helps people lose weight”.

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The main advantage of helping people become successful is that we get to learn a lot about a lot of different industries. We learn new things all the time and it’s amazing how different some things are in different industries. For example, blue headlines can perform better than read headlines in one industry and the opposite can happen in another industry.

But some things always remain the same across different markets and one of them is what we call The Magic Website Formula. It works like this:

Step 1: Grab Their Attention
Use your headline and/or powerful graphics to grab people’s attention. Remember: when people land on your site, you only have 3 seconds to grab their attention or they’ll leave. No, it’s not a typo: you only have 3 seconds to convince them to stay. So it’s crucial that you understand your market and how your prospects think, and then push their emotional hot buttons so they feel that you are talking to them and understand how they feel.

We call this part of the process “The Problem” because it’s where you show people that you understand their problem. Some examples:

“Are You Sick of Credit Card Payments Eating All Your Income?” (Problem: credit card payments are too high)

“Here’s How a 17-Year Old Kid Got $86,750 in Scholarships –In Only 8 Weeks” (Problem: your prospect wants to go to a college he can’t afford)

Step 2: Offer a Solution
After showing them that you understand their problem, offer a solution to it. Examples:

“Here’s a Step-by-Step System that Will Reduce Your Credit Card Debt by 35% -Without Refinancing, Consolidating Your Debt or Paying a Single Dime”

“Let Me Show You How I Got to Go to College for Free and How You Can Do the Same”

Step 3: Explain How You Can Solve their Problem
This is where you tell people how your solution is the right one for their problem. Stack up as much evidence as you can. Use testimonials, product reviews and case studies. If you can show your prospects that your solution was the right one for others with their same problem, they’ll understand that you can offer them a solution too.

Step 4: Make an Offer
Most websites out there just present information but fail at making an offer. Your website is not a place where people go to get information, it’s a marketing tool. And, if you don’t ask people to take action, guess what will happen? Nothing!

The most important thing to keep in mind when you make an offer is to make sure it’s risk-free. Don’t ask for too much. Let’s say you sell a cream to cure acne. If you pitch people about your product and ask them to buy it, most will say no. Go for micro-commitments instead. Make the first call to action to get your free videos or report with 7 tips to getting rid of acne forever. Ask for a name and an email address in exchange.

Once you have their contact information, bond with them. Send them surprise bonuses and content. Pitch your product very lightly at this point. You’re just trying to earn their trust so far. And when you make an offer, make sure it involves very little risk, something like “try my product for free” or “try it now. If it works and you decide to keep it, we’ll bill you in 30 days. If for some crazy reason it doesn’t work for you and you decide to return it, we’ll give you 110% of your money back just for having tried it”.

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There is one thing that every visitor of your website has in common: they have objections. They have a very good reason –real or fictitious, not to buy your product. And, it doesn’t really matter if the reasons are real or not; as long as you don’t handle their objections, they won’t but.

In order to get a product sold, you need to sell it to the right and left sides of the brain (people make emotional decisions and they justify them with logic). What this means to you is that you have to overcome the logical and emotional reasons that people have not to buy your stuff.

What Are the Most Common Objections and What Do They Really Mean?

-    It’s too expensive: here they’re saying one of these things:

o    I don’t have enough money to pay for your stuff (this is a valid reason but it doesn’t happen often. Can you offer monthly installments or BillMeLater on your site?)

o    Your stuff costs more than I’m willing to pay for it (if this is the case, you need to understand that people aren’t objecting about your price, they’re objecting about your value. They feel like what they’re getting is not the price you’re selling it for. In this case you need to do a better job at showing the value of your product. Remember, if you can convince people that your product is worth 10 times more than its price, selling it will be really easy).

o    Your stuff costs more than what your competition sells similar items for (you shouldn’t allow people to compare your stuff with your competitors’. Make it unique so comparisons are not possible. Make sure that what makes your product unique is something of value; having a red box instead of a blue one won’t do the trick.)

-    I don’t trust you: they might use different words, but this is what they really mean. What are you doing to show how credible you are? Use testimonials, media mentions of your company, trust logos (BBB, HackerSafe, 2008 Business of the year, etc.)

If you can show people that others like them trusted you, took the leap of faith and everything worked out great, your chances of getting the sale will be really good.

-    What if it doesn’t work? This is the main concern people have. And it’s completely genuine. After all, how many times have you bough something to discover later that it was crap? What you need to do in this case is to have a risk-reversal tactic (or several) so people come on top even if your product doesn’t work.

100% money back guarantee is not enough, because if your product doesn’t work, it’ll take you about 10 days to refund their money and they will have to go to the post office to ship your product back to you. In this case, people will feel that if your product doesn’t work, they’ll have lost something.

Go beyond the standard 100% money back guarantee. Offer 200% or 100% and they get to keep your product (or part of it if it’s a set of some kind). You can offer same-day pick up of your product and refund of their money, or get it now and pay it in 30 days only if you decide to keep it.

Give it a shot and you’ll be amazed at the results you get.

How to Overcome Objections
Acknowledge them.  If you try to hide them, people will still have unresolved objections on their minds. Don’t think that you might give people reasons not to buy by bringing up objections. They already have those objections, you’re just coming clean and explaining why things are that way.

If you’re product is more expensive than your competitors, explain why and make it a benefit, not a disadvantage. If you don’t have testimonials, explain that your product is new and that you are offering at a discounted price so you can gather testimonials as fast as possible. Do you see how it works? Come up with a list of possible reasons why people won’t buy your products and overcome them.

For the ultimate objection-overcoming experience, you can use testimonials from people that were in the same situation as your current prospects, took the leap and changed their lives forever. Something like this would work like a charm:

“At first I was very skeptical about this product. And the price looked really expensive too. But I was sick of having acne so I decided that it was worth giving it a shot. I’m so glad I did! My skin is a lot clearer now and I don’t feel self-conscious about my appearance anymore.”

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