20 Simple Online Marketing Hacks You Can Use To See Exceptional Results
If you are just getting started in online marketing it can be a bit overwhelming. That’s why in this post I put together my top 20 online marketing hacks I’ve learned over the past 13 years in direct sales. Implement these hacks to get results even faster in your business, because they actually work!
1. Lead with value before you pitch your offer
The first online marketing hack that really works in any business, especially online marketing, is to lead with value before your offer. Too many times people are just in pitch mode. They have a mindset of how can I sell this person, rather than how can I help this person.
When you come to the marketplace in pitch mode you actually push more people away. You ideal goal is to attract them to you, not push them away. You need to come from a service first, value-based mindset, if you want to succeed in online marketing.
Along these lines you need to focus on benefits and not features of your products. Anything you promoting online, should come from a place of value first. People don’t buy on facts, logic, and features, they buy on benefits value and emotion.
So if you’re pitching people on how amazing the features of your products are you will continue to struggle. So the first online marketing hack is to focus on creating value based content first. With that, make sure it serves your target audience, and then transitions to sales from there.
All things being equal people tend to do business with those that they know, like, and trust. This is why it’s so important to lead with value first, before you going to pitch mode.
2. Describe why someone should click a link or affiliate offer
The second online marketing hack you need to implement is describing the links you put on your site. This might sound like a no-brainer, but a lot of the times people put links with intent behind it.
You want to put a description with affiliate links, links to other pages, or even to lead magnets.
They may just highlight a word and make it a link to somewhere else. Certainly do this but you’ll lose a lot of clicks with this strategy alone.
It will work much better to actually tell people what their clicking or why they should click a link. Take some time to write a sentence or two that sells the link, versus just putting a link out there.
For example if you were promoting an affiliate link to an Amazon product you could say, “check the current price on Amazon here.” You may even say something like, “Pick up your copy on the Amazon here.”
If you were promoting a course or another blog post it may sound something like, “You’d like to learn more about building your business on social media check out my free lead generation boot camp.” Or “ If you’d like to learn even more about Instagram marketing. And how to generate leads and sales for your business through Instagram check out this course.”
With a description or a little bit of promotion in front of a link, your reader is much more likely to click on it. This works much better than a highlighted random word. Implement this online marketing hack to increase clicks on your website links.
3. Pixel your website, videos, and content to remarket and lower ad cost and increase conversions
Another online marketing hack you want to implement for building your business is re-targeting and pixeling your content. Doing this can help you turn cold leads into warm leads.
The idea is you’ll start by running some sort of ad like a likes campaign on Facebook ,or a YouTube Discovery ad on YouTube. This will start to get more subscribers, or likes to your page. You’ll then use this as the foundation of developing a warm audience.
From there you will re-target those people that now like your page, to go to some kind of content you’ve created. This content should be value-based. It should help solve that target markets problems needs or wants. After going through that content, you will build more of a relationship, and start to turn that audience into warm leads.
After that, you will then send people that have viewed that content, to some kind of offer. This could be a lead magnet or maybe even selling a product. This will cause a scenario to convert cold traffic into warm leads for your business.
Doing this can help lower the cost of your ad spend, as well as increase the conversion rate on your offers and lead magnet.
In the picture below you can see an example of this being done advertising a free Dotcom Secrets book. I’ve been on that page myself recently and since I have, I now see YouTube ads about it re-targeting me. If you’d like to get a copy of Dotcom Secrets for free as well, you can access it here!
4. Use a sense of urgency with countdown timers
If you’re looking to increase conversion rates on your site, try adding in a countdown timer. Scarcity, curiosity, and urgency is what moves people. Adding a timer on your website can help establish these.
This is especially important and effective when marketing webinars for your business. Having a set deadline of when something happens creates a sense of urgency. This causes more people to take action.
Let’s face it, most people are procrastinators and hate making decisions. Adding in a countdown timer can help them make a decision, they would normally think about.
Certainly use this in an ethical way, and by having a countdown timer, that lets people know when a specific offer is going away, will help them take action faster.
One thing to understand with online marketing, is you’re looking for people that are looking for you. If a timer on your site causes someone to register sooner great, or if it pushes someone away that’s great too.
Most often adding a countdown timer will get people to take action, and increase your conversion ratio on websites. Definitely implement this online marketing hack to get better results in your business.
5. Use one-time-offers as an online marketing hack to increase sales
One-time-offers are another great online marketing hack you should Implement in your business. When people come into your sales funnel, offer them some type of special discount, and one-time offer on something you promote.
This could be an info product course, it coaching session, an e-book, really anything you promote. A great way to have a one-time-offer is to offer it to your new leads at a very discounted price.
I use this strategy when offering my FORM Recruiting Machine Blueprint course. Typically this course sells for a lot more on my resources page, but in certain instances, I offer it at a one-time-only massive discount.
Doing this can help you increase sales, and give your audience a great deal, so everyone wins. Similar to countdown timers, most people procrastinate on everything.
Adding in a one-time-offer can be a great way to increase sales. This can get your audience to take action right away, and buy from you. This is good because most people don’t take action until they have some skin in the game.
Even if it’s something as little as a $15 one-time-offer, that can be enough to get people to take action. This will help them start moving in the right direction. Make sure you implement one-time-offers as one of the online marketing hacks you use to grow your business.
6. Use up-sells after someone makes a purchase to increase revenue
If you aren’t doing this already you need to be adding in up sells. Do this after someone purchases something from you. Up-sells are one of the best online marketing hacks you can use grow your online marketing business.
Why up-sells are so effective is that once someone has made the decision to buy, it’s much easier to get them to add something else on to it. Think of the age-old “would you like fries with that?”
This is a prime example of an up-sell. People have been using up-sells forever, and it should be one of the online marketing hacks you implement as well.
There a lot of ways to do this, and systems you can use, but really just understand the concept. Once someone has purchased something from you, you can offer another product for sale that is related to it.
You can even do this in combination with one-time-offers by adding something else for them to purchase, but you offer it to them at a very discounted price compared to what it normally is.
This can dramatically increase your conversions, and you can turn a small $7 product sale into a few hundred dollars sale without much effort on your end. Definitely utilize up-selling in your online marketing business.
7. Segment your marketing
One Foundation you need to understand for online marketing is, marketing to everyone, is marketing to no one. Finding your target market is a key foundation to building a successful online business.
Without a specific target market in mind, you will continue to struggle. So this online marketing hack is to segment your marketing, and segment your list.
There are many ways to do this, but one of the most popular ways is to segment your email list. Send only relevant content to specific lists.
A very easy way to do this is to simply create different lead magnets based on who you are trying to market to. For example, let’s say you market health and wellness.
You could create a lead magnet geared towards weight loss and getting in shape. You may have another lead magnet that is geared towards skin care. Another one could be targeted at anti-aging.
All of these lead magnets fall into the health and wellness category, but each is going to have a very different target market. Someone interested in skin care may have zero interest in weight loss.
If your marketing weight loss to the people on your skin care list, they are likely to leave and not buy from you. This is why segmenting your list is so important. It definitely is one of the online marketing hacks you need to implement.
If you’re new to setting up lead magnets and don’t have tools in place to do it yet and recommend checking out Clickfunnels set that up. You can actually get a 14-day free trial of the system here.
8. Use direct commands on copy and while speaking
Another cool online marketing hack is to use direct commands in your copy and in your videos. This may seem like common sense, but a lot of people don’t do this in their marketing.
For example, if you’re selling a product on your videos, or on a webinar, or an in-person presentation, often people say things like “if you get started.”
Certainly this is a place to start, but a much higher level version of this is saying things like “when you get started today.” So might you might say something like, “when you get started today on your membership you’re going to get ___.”
This is a very subtle difference, but you can make it huge difference in your conversions. Another example of this is saying things like “by now.” It obviously has a different meaning than “buy now.”, but most people unconsciously can’t tell the difference.
This is an example of a subliminal command to someone looking at your content. Another interesting thing is, that most people can’t pick up on negative. An example of this is saying something like, “don’t miss today’s webinar.”
In this scenario people don’t actually pick up on the “don’t”. This means they read it as “miss today’s webinar”. This is definitely something you want to avoid telling your audience.
Instead of using terms with negatives in them, rather just use direct commands. For example say something like “be sure to register for tonight’s webinar, you’ll be excited you did.”
It might not seem like a lot, but implementing this online marketing hack, can you really increase your conversions.
9. Use call to actions
Along the lines of direct commands is using call to actions. A call to action is basically telling someone to do something after your piece of content.
So at the end of a YouTube video you might say subscribe to my channel for more tips and training. At the end of a blog post you may say something like, “if you’d like to learn more in depth about how to make money blogging check out this blogging course.”
A lot of online marketers miss this, and they miss out on a ton of leads and sales for their business. This is a super simple online marketing hack, but all you need to do is tell people to do something at the end of your content with a call to action.
It’s simple to do but also simple not to do, so be sure to add call the actions at the end of every piece of content. By doing this, you will improve your results.
10. Follow this 4 step video marketing script
Video marketing is one of the best ways to promote your online business. If you’re not using video marketing you need to start using it. Unfortunately, a lot of online marketers don’t know how to properly create videos. Or they always feel like they don’t have anything to talk about.
This online marketing hack will let you create videos with ease, and give you a format to increase results from video marketing. I first learned this concept from Mark Harbert, another great video marketer. Check out his full training here!
See the 4 Step Video Marketing Formula Below
- Intro
- Question
- Content
- Call To Action
The idea is to follow a simple 4 step video marketing formula. The first step is to begin your video with an intro.
This can be as simple as saying, “Hey this is Mike from CoachMikeMacDonald.com”. If you don’t yet have your own website, you could say something like, “Hey this is Mike from NerdProblemsGaming.” And say your brand.
You could just simply say where you’re from. “ Hey this is Mike from Minneapolis, Minnesota.”
The second step is to ask some sort of question. “Do you struggle with generating leads for your business on social media?” or “Are you looking for a better way to lose weight, without spending hours in the gym?”
Whatever the case may be, ask some sort of question in relation to your customers pain points, needs, or desires.
After you ask a question, the next step is to provide your value-based content answering the question. This part is pretty simple, as this is just the content of your video.
Finally the last step is using a call to action. I covered it briefly above, but simply tell your viewer what they should do next. This could go to a lead magnet, subscribing to your channel, or even buying a product of yours.
follow this online marketing hack for content creation, and you’ll be making quality videos in no time.
11. Add subtitles and closed captioning to YouTube videos to improve seo
When you’re making videos on YouTube, one aspect to drive more traffic, is to optimize them with tags and SEO. A little-known online marketing hack that can improve your SEO results, is to add subtitles to your videos.
There are several options to do this directly in YouTube. There is an automatic feature that typically comes up on most videos. However the quality is pretty low.
Still, this can be a good option to add subtitles very quickly to new videos. For the most part the translation and creation of subtitles and closed captions is good enough.
Especially if you’re just using it for SEO purposes. Google will go through the closed captioning on your videos, looking for keywords. When they do this, it can actually rank you better on YouTube and Google.
So as a quick online marketing hack, just add closed captioning and subtitles to your YouTube videos. This can help them perform better. I actually did a video on how to add subtitles incredibly fast to your videos, click here to check it out.
12. Build evergreen content
Another internet marketing hack you want to implement for building your business, is to create evergreen content. If you aren’t familiar with what evergreen content is, its content that you can create once, but it will continue to work for you forever.
The two best options I recommend for evergreen continent is YouTube videos and blog posts. Why these two options are the best in my opinion is that they are both searchable.
YouTube is one of the top search engines in the world right up there with Google. Putting content on there not only can lead to views when you immediately post it, but also long term as people continue to search for those topics.
A blog post is an even better form of this, because it has the same search engine capabilities, but you also own it. Social media marketing is great, and should be a part of your online marketing strategy, but you don’t own social media platforms.
It can be here today and gone tomorrow. While social media marketing is valuable, there are some risks associated with it. Definitely be sure to add evergreen content as part of your social media marketing strategy. This can create more leverage in your internet marketing business.
13. Use talk to text to write content faster
There are several options to utilize talking to text. Using this internet marketing hack can actually help you create content very quickly. In fact I’m actually writing this post right now using this hack.
The version that I currently use to implement talk-to-text for content creation is within Google Docs. I found this version be incredibly accurate, as well as fast.
I can write a several thousand word document, in as little as 30 minutes. From there it’s just a simple step to edit in optimize the post and add in links.
You can create huge post in very little time using the strategy. This is especially helpful if you’re not a very fast at typing. On top of that creating content in the way that you talk, makes it very easy to read for most people.
This can help you retain visitors on your website by creating content that isn’t overly complicated. Have you ever went to a post that was so technical you just left the page immediately?
You can avoid doing things like this by using talk to text. Definitely implement this internet marketing hack to create content faster for your business.
To activate talk to text on Google Docs, simply click on tools, and then voice typing. The only accessory you need is a microphone. I often just use headsets that you get with smartphones, so you probably already have one of these in your house.
This means you can start using this online marketing strategy immediately to build your business. If you don’t have a headset, check out these ones from Skull Candy. I’ve gotten several of these and they work well for talk to text, and phone calls.
14. Use a p.s. line
Another cool internet marketing hack you can use is adding a p.s. line to your content. This can be used on blog post, video, and even in email marketing campaigns.
In general, when you create content, it needs to follow the 80/20 rule. Basically this means 80% of your content needs to be value based and 20% of your content should be selling or promoting something.
A cool way to implement this in almost every post you make, is to lead with value, and then finish your post with a p.s. line to some sort of offer.
This is a great way to generate leads, makes sales, and grow your business. It doesn’t take a lot of time, and you can use the same P.S. lines over and over again to drive traffic, generate leads, and make sales.
An example of this could go something like, “P.S. If you aren’t getting leads for your business online, or if you would like to increase sales on social media, be sure to register for my upcoming Lead Generation Boot Camp!”
15. Top internet marketers track their links
Another thing many online marketers don’t think about is tracking their links. This means knowing exactly where links to your offers are coming from.
One of the best internet marketing hacks you can do is to set up link tracking. Do this on any lead magnet, sales page, even content posts.
If you don’t know where traffic, leads, or sales are coming from, it’s going to be almost impossible to see what’s working or what’s not.
A common mistake internet marketers make is having one link they are promoting on many different platforms. Maybe you’re promoting webinar for example, but you only have one link to register at.
It may seem like a good idea because you can send all your traffic to one spot, however, there’s no way to distinguish where traffic and leads are coming from. You may create a YouTube video that promotes a link, but also send an email blast to your list, and do a Facebook live all promoting the same exact link.
Without any tracking in place, there’s no way to know where things are coming from. When it’s all free traffic, or organic traffic, it might not seem like a big deal. Unfortunately, if you continue with this strategy when you get into paid traffic, you’ll be in for trouble.
You might end up spending thousands of dollars on ads that don’t convert. You’ll have no way of knowing it, because you’re sending everyone to the exact same way regardless of the source.
It may take some time to set up in the beginning, but tracking your links is important. It’s one internet marketing hack you want to start doing as soon as possible.
16. Use sales funnels to automate sales
One foundation to begin automating your business, is setting up sales funnels. These are important because you can use them to create lead magnets, as well as utilize one-time-offers, and up-sells like I mentioned earlier.
The key to using sales funnels to grow your online marketing business, is to create lead magnets that lead with value to your target audience. When you do this, you’ll start to generate highly targeted leads for your business.
Having a sales funnel in place can automate a lot of the groundwork for you. If you have a lot of traffic going to your websites, using sales funnels can be a filter and narrow down the people you really want to be talking to.
Too many times people struggle in their online marketing business because they spent way too much time talking to the wrong people. Setting up sales funnels can be a great strategy to narrow down your audience, and spend time talking to the right people.
Eventually you might be getting so many leads that you only have time to talk to people that have purchase products from you. This is a good problem to have, and without sales funnels in place, you could waste a lot of time on unproductive tasks.
Especially if you want to create passive income, sales funnels are essential. If you’d like to start setting up sales funnels for your business Check out this free 14-day trial of Clickfunnels to start setting some up for your business.
17. When you follow and connect with people they follow you back
Another cool internet marketing hack is to follow and connect with your target market. It might sound like it’s common sense, but a lot of Internet marketers don’t do this.
When you have a solid profile setup, and you connect with and follow people, a good percentage of them will follow you back. Ideally you want to start following and connecting with your ideal target market.
For example let’s say you market health, wellness, and weight loss products. Your ideal target market could be someone that is looking to lose weight.
Now trying to find people that want to lose weight can be pretty simple. You probably imagine someone that follows a company like Weight Watchers, wants to lose weight.
So in this example, if you followed and connect with the followers of Weight Watchers, there’s probably a high probability they are in your ideal target market.
The same strategy works with anything you want to promote. If you promote travel for example, go connect with and follow people that follow the Travel Channel.
Again the concept is to connect with people that have interests and would be an ideal client for yourself. When you do this a high percentage of those people will follow you back.
Doing this will help you with having unlimited people to talk to about your business. As an added bonus most will be in your ideal target market. Start implementing this internet marketing hack today. Ideally you want to connect with at least 10 people every single day in your target market to make this work.
18. Use thanks for following me with an offer to new followers
A follow-up to internet marketing hack number 17, of connecting with and following your target market, is thanking people for following you, and using it to drive traffic.
Unfortunately this strategy is often used in a spammy way, and not a professional way. Well in this internet marketing hack I’m going to teach you how to use it professionally.
The spammy way of doing this would just be simply sending a link to a sales page to someone who followed you. I tend to get these all the time, with messages like, “Thanks for following me, by the way check out my amazing business where you can make $10,000 this month (Insert spammy link here).”
Not only is this kind of message really annoying, it immediately pushes people away from you. A much better way to do this and to generate leads and sales is delivering value.
With a couple of tweaks you can turn a message like this, into a valuable message your new follower actually wants to receive. For example, give them away to connect with you further to drive traffic.
You might say something like, “Thanks so much for following me I really appreciate it! Also you may want to subscribe to my YouTube channel for even more tips and training to help you grow a home business.”
This message will help you get subscribers, and simply adds more value to your new follower without being spammy.
19. Use automation to start conversations not avoid them as one of your online marketing hacks
The more advanced internet marketing becomes, the more opportunities there are to utilize automation. The trouble is, most people use automation to avoid conversations, not get into more of them.
If you’re scared of potential customers, and talking to them, you’re going to have a hard time growing your business. This next internet marketing hack will teach you how to use automation to get into more conversations and grow your business faster.
It’s similar to the last hack, but when you get new followers you can utilize automation to drive traffic, but also start a conversation. I know I’ve generated thousands of leads with the strategy in my business.
At the same time, if I wouldn’t have taken the time to start a conversation, and just used a thank you message to drive traffic, I would have missed out on thousands of leads and sales for my business.
Again use a similar message like you learned above with something like, “Thanks for following me I appreciate it. I hope you get a ton of value from my posts. You might also want to check out this free Instagram marketing training to help you grow a business through Instagram. Also I’m just curious where are you from originally? I’m from Minnesota!”
In this example not only are you driving traffic too a lead magnet, but you’re also giving the chance to start a conversation with this new contact. I’ve used the strategy to generate thousands of leads and sales for my business.
Not everyone will automatically become a lead or sale, after just an automated message, but many do after a quick conversation. So implement this simple online marketing hack of starting conversations with your automation to improve your results.
20. Be you in your marketing
Last but not least, one of the best internet marketing hacks you can use to grow your business faster is to be you in your marketing. Too many times I see people trying to be someone else in their marketing.
Here’s the thing, people want to do business with people, not XYZ company. People by you, before they buy your product, or your business. The thing is, you are going to resonate better with some people than others will.
You might have two people promoting the exact same thing, and one group will resonate more with person one, than they do with person two. One thing a lot of new internet marketers struggle with is worrying about offending, or pushing away a specific audience.
Certainly you don’t want to be a blatantly offending people, but you definitely don’t want to be fake either. For example I’m a video game nerd and I talked about it a lot in my marketing.
For some people that may not be something they want to associate with, or someone they want to do business with. While others that might be the deciding factor of who they want to work with.
So be you and your marketing. Talk about your interests, your hobbies, your beliefs, and attract the right people to your business. You aren’t looking for everyone when you are building your business, just the right ones!
So definitely implement these top 20 online marketing hacks to grow your business faster to get better results. If you liked this post you may also be interested in checking out my post on the top 8 online marketing essentials.
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