The Copywriter’s Toolkit, one of my longest-running and most successful products to date, is on target for a complete makeover.

In version 2.0, dubbed the Conversion Toolkit, there’s updated content and resources for sure.

All the copywriting resources, videos, audio, PDFs, tools, and more from version 1 will all be updated for 2010-2011. Newer tools and web sites are popping up all the time, and version 2.0 will include many of the new offerings.

But that by itself isn’t what makes this upgrade so significant and special.

What really makes it shine is its shift in focus. That is, how much more inclusive of what it takes to produce online or offline campaigns that really boost response and profits. More than just sales copy, this version introduces marketing campaign strategies and tactics, the secrets behind successful offers, reverse-engineering successful promotions, and so much more.

In fact, its bigger and grander focus is why it’s been renamed as the Conversion Toolkit 2.0.

There’s also another big plus.

It’s going to be available on DVDs and CDs shipped right to your door.

Sure, you’ll still be able to access everything on the website, but for some of the content, I wanted a more intimate and pleasurable learning experience, one that’s better suited for viewing on your TV in your living room. Or listening in your car. Or your iPod or portable player. You get the idea.

That’s the Conversion Toolkit.

There will also be another component to version 2.0: The Conversion DNA.

That package will contain more in-depth copywriting and conversion training, real-life case studies, testing results, and more all designed to reveal how all the individual components of a successful campaign fit together for maximum success and profits.

Those components make up the “DNA” part of the equation.

I have a lot of very successful copywriters and marketers helping me with really piling on the value here.

So to give you a sneak peek at what lies ahead, I’ve included 30 minutes of the first DVD of the Conversion Toolkit below.

Remember that all Copywriter’s Toolkit members will have the option to get automatically upgraded to the new shipped version when it’s released for just pennies on the dollar (basically to cover shipping and handling costs), so locking in your access now is the best way to avoid shelling out a few hundred bucks later on when it comes out in a couple months.

If you’re a member, you’re not obligated to upgrade. You’ll just have the option when it’s released.

But first, here’s the preview video of just some of what’s to come. It’s not final, as there’s editing and additional cool stuff going into the mix as I’m writing this. But it should give you a pretty good idea of at least a portion of what’s to come.

Also, I should point out that obviously the DVDs will be at high-quality video and audio. This preview has been rendered at a lower and speedy resolution (and smaller size) formatted just for the web:

You can grab the Copywriter’s Toolkit here and lock in your copy of both the Conversion Toolkit and Conversion DNA when it’s available to save a bundle and get a huge boost in sales, leads, and conversions all at the same time. Just go http://www.copywriters-toolkit.com.

And you can rest assure that there’s lots of direct response goodies in store for you!

What do you think? Please feel free to leave me a comment below and tell me what you liked (and didn’t like) about this preview video.

Also, let me know what you want in the next release. I want to make sure I include the kind of content that will help your business grow dramatically.

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I’ve got a real surprise for you.

On Tuesday, April 6th at 3 PM EST, I’m going to be doing a live event with Jay Conrad Levinson, the “Father of Guerrilla Marketing”, along With Shel Horowitz, who’s has many published marketing books to his credit as well!

Together, the two just wrote the latest Guerrilla Marketing book, “Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green.”

Reserve your spot right now (it’s free) here.

Did you know that you may be eligible for certain state and federal tax credits for “going green?”

“Shel Horowitz has
teamed up with Jay
Conrad Levinson to
create a masterpiece.
‘Guerilla Marketing
Goes Green’ is a guide-
book on ethical marketing,
from two experts with the
highest standards and values
in the industry.”
 
—Dr.Mani Sivasubramanian,
Internet Infopreneur,
Author, and Heart Surgeon

Actually, many countries now have incentives—tax and otherwise—for environmentally-friendly businesses.

And you don’t have to be a GE or Microsoft to get them, either.

In fact, small to mid-sized business stand to gain the lion’s share as a whole.

But tax credits and other government programs are just the tip of the iceberg for most small businesses who go this route.

Let me ask you: How often have you heard the following…

• Nice guys don’t finish last—they finish first

 

• Being a Green, eco-friendly business is more profitable

 

• Customers, suppliers, and even competitors can do a whole lot of your marketing for you

 

So How Can A Successful Business Be Both Green And Successful?

Well, for years Shel has been cheerfully spreading “heresies” like the three ideas above.

I’ve been following Shel for a while. He won an Apex Award for a book he wrote several years ago called “Principled Profit.”

It was one of the first to challenge the conventional wisdom about the place of ethics and the environment in business
success.

That book was ultimately republished by mainstream publishers in both India and Mexico.

An environmental activist since his teens, he even started an international movement around business ethics.

For Shel, these core principles aren’t just something you have to do because it’s the right thing, or simply to stay out of
jail.

They are actually the cornerstones of success.

But You Don’t Have To Listen To Me…

Many well-known companies prove him right every day, showing that you can make a profit and still hold your head up high.

And once again I’m thrilled to let you know that Shel has teamed up with the legendary Jay Conrad Levinson, the “Father of Guerrilla Marketing” …

…To package all his wisdom about success with Green and ethical business practices in a brand new book, “Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet.”

I’ll have them both in a live event on Tuesday, March 16th at 3 PM EST (tomorrow, as I write this), so I can grill them about their million dollar marketing secrets on a shoestring budget (especially when it comes to “green” marketing).

And not only will be be doing a live webinar,
we’ll be broadcasting it all live via UStream!

We’ll be giving away autographed copies of the books plus other goodies, but you must attend to get the goods!

Some of the event will be recorded, but we haven’t decided yet how that will be distributed, whether it’ll be on DVD, a free download, or what.

So you have to attend live in person to get all the benefits.

Plus we only have 1000 lines reserved. That may sound like a lot, but Jay and Shel’s avid followers make mine look like the Tiny Tim Fan Club!

So reserve your spot right now (it’s free) here.

I’m actually traveling up to Massachusetts lugging all my video gear, laptops, mixing boards and stuff just so we can make this a truly “must attend” unforgettable event.

During the event, Shel and Jay will reveal that Green values, strong ethics, and a cooperative philosophy are cornerstones of success.

They’ll provides a roadmap on how to not only run your business in alignment with these values, but how to creatively harness the marketing advantages of that stance–often in ways that cost little or nothing to implement.

With examples of not only what to do right but also how not to do wrong—ranging from solopreneurs to Fortune 100 companies (IBM, Apple, Ford, GM, Johnson & Johnson, and others) …

This remarkable events will help you increase and leverage your Green commitment, reach new markets, and slash your marketing costs.

You’ll actually learn a whole new way to think about marketing, including…

• How to find the “low-hanging fruit” in your campaign—the overlooked money funnels that cost next to nothing (even free) to do, but can impact your carbon footprint massively (And usually gives you a net gain in profit as a bonus!)

 

• Spreading the word at no cost through partner relationships with other businesses and nonprofits/not-for-profits

 

• Turning customers, suppliers, and even competitors into your biggest sales advocates

 

• Cleaning up the coverage in newspapers, radio, TV, blogs, social media sites, and other media – forget stufftotweet.com, we’re talking major cable news outlets!

 

• Creating REAL Green messages that even conservative bloggers have to agree with (and promote for you!)

The book went to press with more than 50 endorsements, including such marketing legends as Mark Joyner, Fern Reiss, Chris Brogan, and Michael Port–not to mention Green gurus like Joel Makower and Jacquelyn Ottman.

But in this “Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green” event, Jay and Shel are going to EXPAND on the ideas they wrote about, and tell you how you can start getting these benefits TOMORROW!

Find out more (and register for free here) — but better hurry… lines are filling up fast!

DISCLAIMER: Initially these two top marketers might make your brain hurt a little, but it’ll be well worth it as they tell you their close-guarded secrets to world-class marketing that doesn’t break the bank–AND leaves your clients and the WORLD in a better place afterward.

One more DISCLAIMER: Shel and Jay are donating a portion of the book launch proceeds to Green America, the nation’s leading green economy organization, helping people and businesses everywhere make the shift to a socially just and environmentally sustainable economy.

Related posts:

• Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green – The Aftermath Well, last week we had a great live event with...
• “Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green” Webinar The latest Guerrilla Marketing book was written by a friend...

I’ve decided to release some complementary videos and audios, plus a resource guide PDF—strategies that’ll help you crank out a killer product in record time.

There’s no catch. I’m giving away 3+ hours of video, audio, and more from some recent content that was up until now only available to my coaching class (they paid hundred of dollars to get access to this).

You’ll discover the best ways to…

• Outsource software design and development (and how to ensure you get what you want)
• Hire quality ghostwriters who know the subject matter
• Let your prospects and customers create the product for you!
• Get paid up front to actually create the product
• Leveraging your assets – use what you already have in your arsenal
• And much more!

Why am I doing this? And how can you find out more (and grab yours right now)?

I explain it in this video right here:

Fool Proof Profits – When You Absolutely Positively Have to Make the Sale

Enjoy!

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Happy April Fool’s Day!

Yesterday I talked about an event that was happening today. That event is the launch of a powerful strategy for your business that’s over a century old, but unfortunately misunderstood by the vast majority businesses out there. What is it?

I call it Foolproof Profits, because when used correctly, it’s a “can’t fail” profit stream for nearly any business.

If you saw my video yesterday, you probably noticed we had a little fun with the April Fool’s theme. Specifically, the “fool” in foolproof.

That’s no accident, of course. But the “fool” theme underscores just how easy these methods are to implement for your business once you get a sense of the foundations surrounding them, and most importantly, where to focus your efforts.

Yes, it quite literally can be foolproof.

I invite you to have a look for yourself at Foolproof Profits.

I break it all down and explain each component right there on that web page. It’s not brain surgery or rocket science. But it can be tempting to focus on one particular aspect while ignoring the others.

Do you use these methods in your own marketing? If so, I’d like to hear about it.

No related posts.

Tomorrow’s a very important day. Yes, it’s April Fool’s Day, but that’s not why it’s so important (even though I have a bit of fun with it).

No, tomorrow is the launch of a very special program. I call it Foolproof Profits, because in a nutshell, that’s what it is: A “can’t fail” strategy to guarantee your business succeeds in any economy, even this mess of a recession.

It’s based on a century-old formula that’s not well-understood by most entrepreneurs to this day.

Tomorrow I’ll reveal that formula, which has done wonders for my business and my family.

In the meantime, we had some silly fun creating an April Fool’s themed video. There’s no sales message or anything here, just me in my wacky court jester outfit once again (last April Fool’s I made my debut in that ridiculous costume).

Note: YouTube now allows you to upload high quality and high definition videos. This one is in high quality widescreen, but to enjoy it, you’ll need to click the “HQ” button in the lower-right corner of the video once the video begins to play. Believe me, the difference in quality is noticeable!

Enjoy, and let me know what you think.

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I never knew I was. Until I got 6 emails by the same marketer every time he did an email broadcast. Then I started unsubscribing (from the wrong emails) Only then did I go look at my own campaigns.

I wasn’t happy by what I found.

This 5-minute podcast may help you see if you’re in the same boat too!

http://www.johnritz.com/podcasts/ar_mistake.mp3

Right-click to save it to your computer, or just click and listen here. It’s short, but it may be a big eye-opener for you!

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My wife and I ate dinner tonight at a local Red Robin restaurant. They bill themselves as having “Gourmet Burgers and Spirits.”

While we didn’t have any spirits, we did try their gourmet burgers. They were good, without a doubt. But the one thing that stood out was their “bottomless steak fries” that you get with every burger. Indeed, any sandwich, I believe.

Why is this important?

Well, not only is it a great benefit, even a USP of sorts, but it’s steak fries, not normal fries you get everywhere else.

That ups the value for sure, but I noticed something else. Something extremely clever on their part.

See, when they brought our burgers and steak fries to our table, I noticed they didn’t give you a huge amount of fries to start out. It wasn’t a particular tiny portion either, but it was far less fries that you’d likely get at any other eating establishment.

Except—you didn’t worry about it, because you could have as many as you want. It was bottomless!

I know what you’re probably thinking. Yeah, so?

Think for a moment what happens at any other restaurant who serves a lot of fries, but DOESN’T have the bottomless thing happening. They wouldn’t give you as few fries as Red Robin did, because you’d say, “Hey, they’re ripping us off. This is all we get?”

So they pile them on and give you a good amount, much of what you don’t end up finishing. That’s a lot of wasted fries when you add up the number of patrons served over any length of time.

Now look at the Red Robin model. They give you a smaller portion, but you don’t mind because you know you can always ask for more. But the thing is, most people don’t.

Most people’s eyes are bigger than their stomachs, and a smaller portion of fries is just fine in the end, especially with half-pound burgers!

Sure, there are some who want more, and they’ll get it. But Red Robin is doing two important things here:

1. They’re cutting costs, which in this day and age for many restaurants is crucial to stay in business, with oil and food and delivery prices being what they are.
2. They’re presenting this cost-cutting as a huge benefit. Who else offers bottomless steak fries?

It’s a huge value builder, and best of all, they don’t even need to deliver in most cases. In fact, I’ll wager they have to cook far less fries than most thriving burger restaurants, because of their model.

Absolutely brilliant! They’re perceived as adding more, but in actuality they deliver less. And this isn’t a shady or sleazy strategy of any kind. Their patrons really can have as much steak fries as they want. It’s just that what they think they want is often different from what they actually want, or in this case, can eat. I’m sure you see where I’m going with this.

Now I know they aren’t the only ones doing some variation of this. Not by a long shot.

But it’s a good lesson. And it’s not just for restaurants.

A marketer I know once told me he offered a product with a limited bonus. The bonus was a free consultation with him on the phone. He sold out the bonuses, and you know how many people took him up on it?

Zero.

But that bonus still had both a real-world and perceived value. The fact that nobody took him up on the bonus didn’t make it any less valuable.

Perhaps there are some opportunities in your business to beef up your offer and USP by going the extra mile. Even if you don’t have to!

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A lot of people think posting to forums is a waste of time. It CAN be, if you’re there just to chat or kill time. But forums represent a tremendous opportunity on many fronts if you use them correctly.

Now I’m not going to talk about marketing your products and services through forums. Not exactly. It’s been discussed many times before by people a lot smarter than me. But I will talk about something that anyone who chooses to sell through a forum outlet will want to know.

I recently gave some tips on a well-known marketing forum in response to the post of a forum owner. He wanted to know how to get his forum posts ranked higher in the search engines (SEs), and thus wanted more relevant traffic through his own forum.

An understandable goal.

He got some good advice, including getting backlinks to many of the individual posts on his forum.

But what WASN’T mentioned was HOW to get some of those backlinks. Aside from linking to forum threads from your own sites, how do you get other people to link to them? Because that’s what you really need to be successful.

So I offered some tips based on what has worked for me. I run many forums outside the marketing niches, including one for the telecom/call center niche. So let’s take that one as an example.

But the bottom line is, if you run a forum, you need to get topics that people outside the forum will link to on their own.

The usual viral topics will often work: controversy, funny, incredibly useful, you know the drill.

Even if you have to pay people to regularly post content (or do it yourself).

A good way to get started is to see which threads people are linking to on similar forums.

You need to do this with all the major SE’s, not just Google, because Google keeps many of it’s backlinks hidden from their search results.

So let’s take my telecom forum as an example. I might start at Google and do a search on all of my keywords (and add the word “forum” or “discussion board” to the search). That’ll get me a list of competing forums.

I might search for:

• call center forum
• telecommunications forum
• telecom discussion board

Stuff like that.

Then I’ll visit the ones with the greater rankings, since they’re usually the ones that have been vetted and stood the test of time (most forums don’t last very long). Then I’ll make a list of all the forums that look promising and have lots of REGULAR content (i.e. both old and new, CONSISTENTLY).

Finally, I’ll go to the advance search in Google and check the backlinks leading into each of these. Like I said, Google doesn’t reveal as many backlinks as, say, Yahoo does, so you’ll need to hit up Yahoo and MSN, at a minimum, in addition to Google.

Now you’ll have a sense of what kinds of threads in your industry generate external backlinks. You want more threads like those in your own forum, and you need to be able to spread the word about them.

I’ll talk more about this again but I thought this may help some of you who either have forums or are considering starting one. Not only do I own several forums, I’m a moderator in a few that you probably already visit.

And even if you don’t own a forum, those same tactics can get more external links to YOUR threads and postings on any forum you visit. The trick is to post something people will want to link to.

No related posts.

A few days ago I wrote about how I finally jumped on the Facebook bandwagon.

Since then as you probably know, I’ve been connecting with lots of people for networking and friendship purposes.

It’s a great way to build relationships and get in contact with other like-minded business folks, any one of who could be the missing link in a future (or present) project of yours.

So if you haven’t done so, I suggest you start looking at your own clients and associates and begin hooking up with them on Facebook as well.

I’m not talking about a “personal social” setup similar to MySpace and other sites. After all, you can set up your Facebook profile to be as professional-looking as you like.

I see some big things ahead for Facebook, BUT…

There’s another phenomenon that’s been around for a bit, but lately seems to be taking the online world by storm.

I’m talking about Twitter.

If you’re not familiar with Twitter, it’s sort of a “mini-blog” you can publish in real-time, as you go about doing things in your business and life in general.

In fact, Twitter originally started as a platform to text messages from your mobile phone to let the world at large know what you were doing at any given moment.

I know it sounds kind of silly at first glance. In fact, I originally thought so too. But after seeing what some of my friends and colleagues were doing with it, I can tell that it has the power to be a tremendous business and marketing tool.

Unlike where your email subscribers and clients get your email messages (which have to hurdle their way through spam filters and other obstacles), in Twitter your friends and associates can choose to “follow” what you’re doing and get targeted messages delivered to the device of their choosing. No more spam filters.

You can also follow what other marketers are doing as they post links to videos and other resources in real-time.

In fact, you can even link Twitter and Facebook together (just do a search on Facebook for “Twitter” for the Facebook application that let’s you do that.. or go here).

And like Facebook, Twitter doesn’t cost a nickel to join or use.

So if you’re not on Twitter, I’d check it out. If you want to see what I’m up to in my day-to-day activities and get information I don’t make available anywhere else, you can connect with me here.

Just click on the “Follow” button under my picture.

And if you or anyone you know would like to connect with me on Facebook as well, you can do so here.

No related posts.

Ok, yesterday I wrote about my new adventures with Facebook. Looks like I’ll have much more to write about in the days ahead about Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, among others.

But something interested happened today that I want to share with you. You may slap yourself in the forehead and say, “John, you idiot, this is old news.”

That may be, but this is the first time I’ve noticed it.

Here’s what I mean…

We all know about PPC ads scraping content off your web page for relevancy so it knows which ad to run.

After all, if my page is about skiing and the ad shown from Google or another provider is about golfing, well, it’s just not going to get clicks.

So we’re in agreement that the ad provider needs to “scrape” your page to learn what it’s about, right?

But what if you posted a link to another site that your visitors might be interested in? In the old days,you COULD have a site about skiing and a link to a golf site if you wanted, and all the ads would show skiing-related ads.

But (and here’s the “duh” part you might be screaming at me as you read this)… if those ads can go and check out your links and scrape the content there, dont’cha think it has a better chance of providing relevant ads?

Well, I’ve long suspected that was the natural evolution of these things, but I finally got confirmation today.

While I’d love to give you all the details right here in this blog post, it’s necessary for me to send you to this thread on Michel Fortin’s forum to see what I’m talking about. Look for my post on that thread and note the image I posted. I promise you it’ll all become clear once you read this.

No related posts.