“What is the one thing that almost made you not buy?”
For people who purchase, this question gets asked on or right after the thank you page.
All the people who just spent money with you will tell you what friction they had on your website, what they didn’t understand, what they wish they knew more about, what was a bother.
These people just went through your website. The information they give you is super relevant, super fresh, and they’re trying to help you because they just spent money with you.
This also makes people enjoy your product more because they qualify themselves. “They feel like they’ve contributed to your business, so now they’re more invested in seeing you win.”
“It works every time. This is responsible for 6 of our 10 biggest wins over the last four or five years. We literally implement this on all of our stores [over 300 of them]. ”
Three podcasts
I got a bit too excited with this article and jumped into it before even giving an explanation.
Over the last week I had three guests on my podcast.
Yesterday, Matthew Stafford, who’s been doing conversion rate optimization for over a decade, came on. The advice above is from him. He says of it, “What the customer gives us is way different than what the owner [who we’re working with] believes we need to see.”
In fact, that advice was sogood I literally put it into my SEO Program, Compact Keywords, immediately after finishing the recording:
This comes directly after the Compact Keywords thank you page.
Tuesday, Bill Hartzer, a legend in SEO who’s been a well-known figure in the industry for 25 years, came on the show.
Last weekend, Keida Dervishi, who, at 19-years-old, had her IG/TikTok-driven ecom business break 7 figures, came on. Now, at 23, she’s doing many millions a year and has 20 people working for her.
Here are four more needle movers I got from these people.
Turning one-time customers into repeat customers
In addition to that simple one question mentioned above, the customer also receives a post-purchase survey email.
In exchange for filling out the survey within 48 hours of purchasing, the customer gets a gift card/discount to come back and buy more on the site.
“ What we thought we were doing was buying data,” Matthew told me. “What we found is these people came back and bought more within seven days, which is quicker than even their shipping times. And over time, these customers are about four or five times more valuable than the average customer.”
Crazy, right?
The questions in the survey are things like:
- “How did you find out about us?”
- “Who are competitors you considered?”
- “What caused you to make the purchase?”
To me, this is an insane hack. You get more data and when people give it to you, it makes them MORE LIKELY to buy more from you.
To listen to the full podcast with Matthew Stafford (with so many more of these bangers), it’s here:
One of the craziest Local SEO shortcuts
Bill Hartzer has done countless SEO experiments.
One of the things he’s found is that when people search your business on Google Maps, use the directions feature to go to it, and actually go to it, your business is more likely to appear high on Google Maps for its keywords.
As a result, tons of methods have been developed for gaming this, such as this black hat trick.
But is there a way to exploit this that is not against Google’s guidelines?
There is.
Giveaways.
Here’s how it goes:
- Local Instagram accounts and local newsletters constantly need local information to share with their followers & subscribers. Some charge a small advertising fee, others don’t.
- You have a giveaway or huge discount.
- It’s announced to the local IGs and newsletters.
- Lots of people who haven’t previously been exposed to your business see this, put your business name into Google Maps, use directions, and go to your business.
- You have great customer service so you get the added benefit of lots of positive reviews.
- The high amount of people searching and going to your business + the reviews make local rankings increase.
Hear Bill Hartzer talk more about this here:
High frequency posting lifestyle
Keida Dervishi is basically doing the Build in Public trend with her ecom business.
Build in Public is a movement that originated years ago on SaaS Twitter starting with Pieter Levels.
The concept is easy to understand: you build your business in public and share everything: successes, failures, learnings, tests, iterations, revenue, etc.
Keida Dervishi is doing most of this, posting seven times a day.
She’s mostly sharing orders she got, her reactions, and making the items that were ordered – a version of Build in Public.
Each video she makes also sells the product. Like this one, which received 70 million views: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C2x3cSwPRrx/
She’s not making silly dance videos or news videos that don’t sell. She is going viral with sales videos. Super impactful. She’s posting 7x per day and making millions of dollars per year.
Here’s how she posts 7x/day:
- She makes her videos in the TikTok app (very easy and fast).
- You can use this tool to make your videos auto-release from TikTok to every channel.
- She closes her eyes when searching for trending sounds on the FYP (if she doesn’t close her eyes, the FYP will distract her and cost her too much time).
- She wakes up at 5 AM. Exercises, eats well, in bed by 8-9 PM. Disciplined.
- She’s also partly doing operations so her time is very valuable. She has her calendar planned weeks in advance to the minute.
- She barely looks at comments. She posts, then makes more content.
- She has standard formats she does, like reaction formats, or standard hooks she uses like the one in the above viral video.
I’m at 860 consecutive days of posting videos so from one creator to another, Keida was awesome to talk to. She shared so much good stuff. You can hear it all here:
How to make people more likely to convert
I asked Matthew Stafford what he puts in his checkout section.
Most people just have a plain checkout area with nothing else. Here’s what Matthew puts:
- How many customers the business served or how long they’ve been in business.
- High quality reviews, especially ones that address common objections.
- The biggest thing was a phone number.
- It builds trust.
- Very few people actually use it, they just like to see it.
- The people who do use it are literally about to purchase, they just need one thing answered.
Thank you again to Keida, Bill, and Matthew for coming on the pod!
Compact Keywords
Years ago, before making the Compact Keywords program, I showed the results to my old mentor who, at the time, was Head of SEO at Omnicom. Omnicom is the 2nd largest publicly traded marketing agency, ranked by market cap.
The results I was getting were so outstanding, I was asked to teach the method to Omnicom’s SEOs.
If you like these articles, my podcast, or my mobile videos, you’re going to like Compact Keywords.
It’s a comprehensive video course along with my personal SEO templates showing how to do this method of SEO.
And you don’t need to work at Omnicom to get it.
It’s only $499.
Every 20 minutes of Compact Keywords was 7 hours of preparation, production, and reviewing from me. And the program is 10 hours long, plus an additional 15 weekly keyword breakdowns. So the time to make it added up.
This wasn’t a weekend product, Compact Keywords took me 11 months to make.
You can get it now here.
Thank you for reading.
