Armand Morin’s Driving Traffic Call - Three Thoughts

Last night, Armand Morin held a teleseminar on driving traffic. It was free and if you were on his notification list, you would have received an invite.

But don’t worry, it’s not that exclusive…

If you didn’t get an invite, you can listen to the call online now. I just finished listening in and it’s got some decent stuff and it’s actually quite motivational.

Besides Armand’s admission that he’s not the “sharpest tool in the shed” (I don’t believe that!), he also talks about:

-> Article Marketing: Why it’s a long-lasting promotional plan and why you shouldn’t worry about duplicate content.

-> The Holy Crap Factor: How to get people to talk about you and your products, without any compensation.

-> Building Your Affiliate Force: Very solid advice here…and some good motivation to stop being a wimp with your own affiliate program.

-> Conversion Tips: Your traffic is no good if you don’t convert to sales. He provides some very practical tips to start using on your site right away.

-> Writing Sales Letter: He has some practical tips to help you put together sales letter without so much headache.

Now, those were Armand’s thoughts. Listen to the call and then here are my 3 thoughts on some of the things Armand had to say:

1. Just a clarification on Armand’s thoughts on duplicate content. I agree that duplicate content isn’t as big an issue as as people sometimes make it out to be, but if you want the official wording from Google (which he just paraphrased), here is a snippet:

“Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results. If your site suffers from duplicate content issues, and you don’t follow the advice listed above, we do a good job of choosing a version of the content to show in our search results.”

And Google has now dedicated a full page to the discussion of duplicate content that will help you ensure the content you want shown to search engine visitors stays indexed in Google:

-> Google’s Definition of Duplicate Content

It is definitely worth reading through as it will likely ease some of your fears and help you approach the issue of duplicate content.

2. Your Affiliate Program Doesn’t Run Itself. I think that’s one of the main points Armand was trying to make about getting your affiliate program going - and I absolutely agree. Now, that doesn’t mean you have to be a slave to your affiliate program, but if you’ve set one up…do something about it. Contact people, train your affiliates and get them motivated. If you’re guilty of only putting a link to your affiliate program at the bottom of your page, now IS the time to get things in gear.

3. Here’s another perspective on asking your readers to buy more than once in a sales letter. I have seen differing advice on this and obviously, the answer is to test your own results - but I do find it interesting that two people who test A LOT and are famous for improving conversions have differing advice.

John Reese insists that it’s a mistake to ask more than once in a sales letter. His opinion is based on testing, but his logic is that putting a sales link too early in the letter can kill a sale. In other words, you’re asking for the sale before you’ve done your job of convincing your potential customer.

Again - how do you know what you should do? Test it.
Overall, Armand provides some very useful strategies that are easy-to-implement and after listening, you should have at least a few action plans to start improving things for your business.

If you’ve listened, please feel free to share your takeaways or thoughts.