MATT
BACAK
interview
HostGavinMcCoy: My guest on the Internet Marketing
Newsletter today, the podcast, is Matt Bacak, from Atlanta, Georgia.
Hi,
good afternoon Matt.
Matt
Bacak: Hey, thanks
for having me.
HostGavinMcCoy: Matt, you've had a fantastic career
in internet marketing, and if we can start with just taking the clock back a
few years as to what you did before you became an internet marketer.
Matt
Bacak: I'd have to
go back more than few years. But what I did before I was an internet marketer,
I was pretty much doing it in college. So back then, I was doing sales, I mean,
I guess. I had my own company, so I had been running my own company since I was
a kid.
When
I got started, we called it the information superhighway. So everything that we
know today wasn't existing, pretty much. There's really nothing that was around
back then, maybe AOL, if that's even around. So there's not much. But before,
initially what was I doing? I was just a kid that wanted to make a lot of
money, I mean, really in my dorm room.
HostGavinMcCoy: What was your first kind of interest
in using the internet to market? How did you get that idea?
Matt Bacak: So
I was going out knocking on doors and trying to get people to buy stuff, and it
was a pain in the butt. So instead of me chasing people down, I figured I
wanted people just to come to me. And that kind of was the big thing. I was
like, "If I could just get people to come to me instead of me, instead of
me chasing them down, that would be a great scenario." And that kind of
caused me to start looking at this internet thing and get started doing stuff.
HostGavinMcCoy: Did you initially sell hard products
or did you go straight away for information?
Matt
Bacak: Yeah, I did.
I sold cassettes. Information, yes. But on cassette tapes, on VHS tapes, so all
of that. That was before the DVD, and now actually DVDs are going obsolete, so
I'm actually seeing the next wave of things being obsolete, the stuff we were
selling with information. But I was selling other people's information, not my
own. Actually it was Kiyosaki stuff, right, when he was getting started? So I
sold the books, and I sold just hard stuff.
HostGavinMcCoy: Everybody says the money is in the
list. You've all got to start with one name and one small list.
Matt
Bacak: Well, I
think for a lot of people that are listening, I mean, just to speak to them, I
think there's really two ways we could do it. One, creating, giving somebody an
ethical bribe or something for free is always a great way to get people on your
list. But I will say over my years, I would always tell people that ... today,
I would tell people, really, I think you have two choices.
Actually
this latter, this new choice is a better choice I would believe for everybody
is instead of giving something away for free, you might want to create it and
make it a lower ticket product and have people opt-in with their credit card,
so you can actually build a buyers list. And that's going to be the best list
you can ever build.
You
know, you could build 100,000 people or 10,000 people. From 10,000 people
giving away stuff for free, or you can buy and get a thousand people that
bought something from you, even if it's a dollar, that's going to be so much
better than the 10,000. So my point to a lot of people is, you can go one of
either route, just realise all subscribers aren't equal, but the best buyers
you can ever get are the ones that opt-in with their credit card.
Now
a lot of times today, you know, people will say, put an opt-in page up, drive
traffic to the page, have people sign up, give them something for free. That's
what I've taught forever. But today I tell people, "Well, you have two routes and it's
which route do you want to go?" I prefer the newer route.
I
didn't think about that before, but more and more I start utilising data, more
and more I started looking at things, the more and more I realised the power of
somebody opt-in with a credit card is so much bigger than the power of somebody
just looking, because you get tyre kickers, plate lickers, you get all these.
The
thing is, you get complaints, more complaints. Somebody that gave you their
credit card, now you have more, even they have bare commitment, but also you have
more backup to say, "Hey, look you did, you bought this." Instead of,
"Hey you opted in." Because today, people do some crazy stuff with
opt-ins, but buying is a good gate too or a good hurdle people can jump over to
really prove, to show you that one, they're interested, and two, it's going to
make your list more powerful and more responsive than anything else you could
do.
HostGavinMcCoy: So definitely the starting point for a new internet marketer is try and find something to catch people's attention?
Matt Bacak: High value, and now it's just according to how you want to price that. I mean, because there are people who sell 2,000 odd products for a dollar. You know what I mean? You're going to get a lot of opt-ins if you do something like that. I'm not telling anybody to do it, but really, yeah, something of high quality, high value, because the first impression is the most important thing for everybody. If you do deliver something that they just pay $7 for something that's worth 500 or a hundred dollars, they're like, "Oh my gosh," imagine what they're going to give me when I give them more money.
HostGavinMcCoy: So the definite thing to remember is high value information, but low cost to get people hooked in. And, from that, I think you can kindle a sense of indebtedness because people think, "Wow, you're really generous in giving us all of this stuff for next to nothing." That sometimes opens the door for the next transaction.
Matt Bacak: And the loyalty and the trust factor. I mean, that's a big thing too. That's one thing that's underlining with all the lists that we're ever going to build, the biggest thing is, when somebody comes in, especially the first time they meet you, people talk about building rapport, and that's great, but the best way to build the best rapport is to build trust.
Everybody's like, "Oh, you want to build these relationships?" The best way to build a relationship is do what the heck you say you're going to do, and do it better. You know, under promise and over deliver, you're going to build so much more trust, and so much more better relationship with that people.
The other thing too, for a lot of people, because you know, I made millions, multi-millions from email, and I will say everybody's like, "Oh, go out and build these ... once somebody signs up, send out these relationship things." It's great and that's a good idea, and it does make people all excited and feel good about it. But the point is, how you train your list at the beginning is how they're going to treat you in the end.
So my point is, if you do let them know, "Hey, I'm going to give you good value stuff. I'm here to give you good value stuff that's going to change your life or whatever feeling you have."
HostGavinMcCoy: In terms of once somebody gets onto
a list of yours, email people often or not very often?
Matt
Bacak: Well, that's
really dependent on the individual, I think. So the most important thing for
everybody listening is the decision you make at the beginning of the
relationship. So if it's how you want to train them, like it's not just
training them to give them good value and volume, but if you're going to be
sending emails every single day, then you better do it from the beginning.
If
you choose to send three times a week or once a week, you want to be careful
with that, especially on once a week, be very careful with that. If you train
people, and I've seen this happen before with clients where they're like,
"You know what? I'm not going to mail everyday like you do, Matt. What I'm
going to do is once a week I'm going to mail every Wednesday." If you miss
a Wednesday, they're going to get upset with you. If you change your behaviour
a little bit after they've been trained a certain way, it could cause some
issues. So realise that when you are going on, it's what you choose to do.
Now,
I will say this for everybody listening. I mean, there is such thing as an
opportunity cost, right? There's also another thing, two things really is,
opportunity costs and subscribers expire. My point is two-fold.
One, well let's go
with expiration thing is, so most people don't realise, depending on the market
that people are in. For example, if you're building a list of people that are
looking for a quick fix on something. I usually tell people, "Look for
bleeding necks." Like somebody who has a bleeding neck, they get it fixed,
they don't need you anymore. So they're going to go away. I'm using that as an
example, but they're going to go away.
So the life of that
is very short. So every market ... people don't realise this, but there is an
expiration date. The average subscriber is going to leave. Now, in for example,
the internet marketing space, we have three months. That's all we have a lot of
times.
Then there's going
to be some people that stay around, but really people expire. People are like,
"Oh, I want to go online. I want to go make money." Then within three
months, after three months, those subscribers will start dropping off because
it kind of like there's an expiration date…
To Your Online Success
Steven Morton
Founder-Marketing Mastermind Tips
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