Tracy Repchuk: Strategic Storytelling Begins with a Good Landing Page

Alzay Calhoun:  Hey everybody, it's Alzay Calhoun. Today I'm here with Tracy Repchuk, and Tracy has a really expansive background in Internet marketing. She's going to help us get our heads around many of the tools that exist in the world of Internet marketing and which ones are the most useful for us who want to see some results from them.

But before we get too deep in today's conversation, I want to first say hello to Tracy. Hello how are you doing today Tracy?

Tracy Repchuk:  I'm doing awesome Alzay, nice to be here.

Alzay:  Yes indeed. Thank you so much for making time today. Let's start at the very beginning, please tell us the story of when you understood that online marketing was important.

Tracy:  If we go back to my background a little bit, I graduated with a degree in IT at the age of 19, and so I started a software company. I've understood that technology is critical. Then in 1994 when the Internet emerged, I already started to move myself and my entire company to that. Then we started to develop software and websites for banks, government agencies, nonprofits, lottery cooperation in Fortune 500 companies.

Literally I've seen every change from the very beginning, and that has given me this unprecedented perspective on what does the Internet mean for us today. Not only did I jump in heavily, around 2007 from a marketing perspective, but I looked at it as a different angle in a...

Literally, never before in history have we had this chance to change the world forever.

We're at a taping point where we can reach millions in minutes. We can impact change through the use of social media. We can jump on positive messaging campaigns and classes. We can really restore ourselves to this spiritual native's state with peace, harmony, and preservation of the planet.

From that, that became the Global Impact ‑‑ perception that I now carry for what is Internet marketing?

Alzay:  That's interesting. Tell us more about that particular perspective. Give us some bullet points, or some major themes of that perspective. I haven't heard that before.

Tracy:  If you take a look at my big vision, my purpose, right. For me it's being the catalyst to the game changers, the speakers, authors, businesses that literally has something so important today that their message has to get, and it's going to be an impact to the world.

When we take a look at the angle of social consciousness, literally I believe that if we attach our company, our messages to a bigger vision and purpose, then we can impact the change that we need to. I was just in China, for example, I was a keynote speaker for an event called The Global Economic Leader Summit. It was in front of presidents, heads of states, CEOs, and dignitaries.

My message there was called the Social Consciousness of Technology, and what I was doing was trying to raise their responsibility as CEOs in corporations, and heads of state to literally understand that everything they're saying, they can connect a positive message to it, and they can raise awareness for poverty, war, anti‑drug, education, any of the elements we need to bring awareness to so that all of us start to rally towards a solution rather than constantly pushing things under the carpet.

Alzay:  And so mechanically how does that work? I get the idea that we can attach our talk track as a company to a social movement of the day, but that sounds very corporate as I say it. That sounds very dry, that sounds very... It doesn't sound like what you intend. Please draw a picture for us to help us better grasp what that looks like in reality, when you actually authentically connect a company's message to what's happening in the world socially?

Tracy:  OK, it has two angles. One is, of course, from a corporate but the other is for people like ourselves ‑‑ who are what I will call smaller based, under $25 million businesses. We're the ones that are primarily already revolving our company and our message around a better cause or at least those are the coins that I'm selecting. I'm selecting holistic healers. I'm selecting people with positive messages, people who are using spirituality and energy techniques to resolve pains, problems, all of these things.

So, that in itself has already become the message, the catalyst, and the carrier with social media and Internet. If we look at the bigger picture though and take a corporation, for example.

In China what I was presenting is that if a company was an engineering firm or something and they were dealing with the creation of what they were calling these new cities, which literally they were creating the infrastructure for an entirely new development, they could then connect it to solar power, they could connect it to water preservation.

Instead of using coal or something that is harming the environment pollution wise, connected to companies that have systems that could eliminate all of that by‑product, and fill the world with better air quality.

All of this technology, and all of these companies that have better solutions exist, is a question of matching them to a company that is in, and hopefully just about the bottom line. But they are interested in implementing socially conscious solutions to prevent the downward spiral that we have going on the planet right now.

Alzay:  Let's say that I'm one of those companies. I run one of those companies, meaning I'm one of those companies that believes in some measure, social change. I believe that what I do is significant beyond what I get paid to do it or what my company gets paid to do it.

Tracy:  Yes.

Alzay:  All right, so now I need a sense of tools, I need a website. I guess I start there to begin to communicate what I have. What other kind of baseline tools should I be looking to use to begin to say what I have to say?

Tracy:  Let's take a look at a smaller entity then, because we'll take a look at how does a startup begins for example. At this point here, the first thing you want to do is identify what it is that you do for somebody. So what do you deliver? What is your service?

Then you need to identify who is your target market and all of this is...You're going to have to go to Google, you're going to research it or find a consultant or somebody like myself, who can help you get that information as the connexion pertains to the impact that you want to leave.

Then you develop a brand around that messaging, so you create your clear message. What is it that you do for somebody? Then you get your unique selling proposition, and then it goes to the Webs. Now once you have established that, we're taking a look at landing page.

This is the thing I build before I build a company site. I build the landing page. We are going to build that front end market funnel. Because that way we can jump on the social media, and we can start to talk about what it is that we do, and drive traffic to at least building mechanism.

If we just go to our website, and then start driving traffic to the website, we're wasting our time, and our prospect's time because they'll just get overwhelmed with the 3, 500 things going on our website and leave.

When we send them to a landing page, now we have the ability to control the conversation, and spoon‑feed them, and educate them in a way that they can consume. Then from there it just becomes add‑ons strategies, depending on the growth, direction and impact, and budget that they have to take an idea ‑‑ product service, to where they want it to go.

Alzay:  Let's discuss the landing page concept a little bit more. For some, I want to assume for the sake of speed in our conversation, that the audience knows what a landing page is. We want to connect the dots on why you just recommended a landing page being the starting place for your web presence, instead of a full bloom website.

Dig a little deeper there, tell us why you suggest to start there?

Tracy:  Primarily because, if our target audiences are easily sort after on platforms such as social media. Which is of course pocketed in a very simple way for us to find who we want as a prospect, and ultimately customer, we need to send them some place.

If we just go to social media and start engaging, chatting, poking, liking, whatever, it all stays there. So, two things occur when you remain over in the social media platform, one is you don't own that list. If anything would happen, if Facebook were to settle what you're doing and shuts you down, there goes all your followers, same with any of Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, any of those.

The second thing is you need to get them over into your own database. If you've heard that the money is in the follow‑up, you can't follow up properly in social media on a mass scale, which is what we're talking about.

I want you to be able to impact millions. In order to do that, you have to bring in an autoresponder technology so that you can communicate en masse in a feel of a one‑to‑one conversation. Then you can drip‑feed and educate to the point where hopefully someone knows you, likes you, trusts you, and ultimately buys from you.

You don't even need the big picture yet, until you've mastered your message and what you're selling. That can happen on a smaller scale over in the landing page.

Alzay:  What you also said, and I'm going to ask you to dig a little deeper than this, is, I believe you said, "Using the landing page allows us to control the conversation." Did you say that a minute ago?

Tracy:  Yes, I did.

Alzay:  Tell us more about how a landing page helps us control a conversation, because I would think the full website would do a better job of that, because there's more data there, right?

Tracy:  Yeah. Here's what happens in the full website, they get completely overwhelmed. They go there, and let's say you had an opt‑in on your master site, and no landing page, and you said, "Hey, go to tracyrepchuk.com. Go and get my free guide." Someone may go immediately with the intention of getting that free guide.

But as soon as they get there, they see a video, and they play it. Then they see something else and they look. Then they're like, "Oh. Wow. She's a speaker." They click and they go look. Then they see something else like, "Oh, look at the products she has, or the services she has."

You start to take a person down a rabbit hole of confusion because they don't have the context of what all of that is to their exact problem or pain. Now they leave. They came with an intention and they left without doing it.

What happens on the landing page is you're dealing with one issue only. You're going to focus their attention in on that. They're either in or they're out. They give you their name and their email address. Now you're drip‑feeding in bite‑sized chunks that they can consume ‑‑ information about you and your company.

An email might go out at some point that would say, "If you're having an overwhelm with social media, and really don't know where you should be doing it, and quite frankly, find it a waste of time, then maybe you should check out one of my products on onlineclaritycleanse.com."

That would be a context moment for somebody. If they were having that, they would now go check out that product. If they're not, they're like, "No, I'm good there." Then another future email would go out and say, "You know what? There's nothing more unbelievably powerful than learning in a live environment. How would you like to spend three days with me? Over those 72 hours you're going to walk away with your complete end‑to‑end online marketing blueprint. If that's something you need then head to businessonlinemastery.com."

You're putting things that you can do and ways you can help them into such a context, that they get it or they don't need it. Either way, it's allowing the prospect to understand more of what you do, and where you guys can start your relationship.

Alzay:  I think you used a really good word there. You said "Context" more than once. If you're a business owner that believes that there is a social element to what you do, that social element may not be immediately understood.

You've got to develop some sort of conversation around that. Your point here is that the focus on the landing page allows you to drip‑feed, allows you to step‑by‑step introduce that larger context, which is what will eventually connect that person with you. Am I summarizing that well?

Tracy:  That's exactly it.

Alzay:  Wonderful. Let's talk tools for a quick second. Landing page, you may know what one is, but you may not know when or how to create one. Is there a tool that you recommend for making a landing page?

Tracy:  Here's my philosophy about that. Depending on where the person in their business, I don't think they should be doing it themselves. You should contact somebody like myself who does it for you. Here's why. A landing page has 22 elements of design that are specific to producing the outcome that you want.

 

You could go get my book, "31 Days to Millionaire Marketing Miracles." It will guide you and tell you the steps to, "Hey, you can get a landing page domain name. You can go host on GoDaddy and then you can start to create your site using a WordPress theme." But the problem with that is, before you even begin the landing page, you need to understand the, again I'm going to use the word, "Context" or outcome that you want.

Many times people haven't a clue what that is. Do you want to promote something specific? Do you want to focus in on a specific target audience? Do you want to focus in on a specific pain point? Each strategy has its own pros and cons. If they just want to go for it, then the WordPress domain name and hosting will get them there. Then, of course, you need an autoresponder as one of the tools.

Here's the issue. There's hundreds of autoresponders out there. It's pros and cons for everything. You need one and you want to buy wisely. This is where assistance helps in the selection, because if you choose one that's small...As great as AWeber is, the problem there is you will outgrow it really quickly, because as soon as you need affiliate management and tracking or ecommerce integration, you're done.

You can't just hop your leads from one system to another, because they don't allow for legitimate importing, of course, to prevent scams, spamming. You need to choose wisely at the very beginning of that.

Your consulting, when you seek out the proper advice from somebody, specific to your exact needs, it is money so well spent, because a year down the road, if you're attempting to switch from one autoresponder to another, you're going to lose the majority of the database you just spent a year building.

Alzay:  I want to say thank you so very much for the response that you've just given. What you've just said is that we're asking the leader of the business to stay the leader of the business, to not be in the activities of creating landing pages. That's not what you do. For the listener who was listening and knows what a landing page is and knows how to create one, OK.

But if you've only seen one and don't know how to create one, to begin to learn that, is much harder than it looks. You just said there are 22 necessary elements of a landing page. If you want to learn those and try to execute those, good luck. There are land mines in that conversation. Thank you for reminding us that there is no secret tool to get done what you need to get done. There's a strategy element to all of it.

Tracy:  Exactly.

Alzay:  Very, very good. Please keep painting the picture. You've got the landing page. You've got some follow‑up messaging to help see the conversation. Eventually you want someone to buy something from you, right? Because you are a business, how does that part work? How should we think about that from where we are right now in the conversation?

Tracy:  Once somebody has opted into your landing page, there are a number of avenues you can go immediately when they hit the site. The first one is simply saying, "Thank you," and then giving them their gift.

Here's the key. That gift you give is not a random interview or a random rambling. It is a very structured format to educating rapidly in 15 minutes what it is that you do, what do you address and then, ultimately, driving them to the next action. That's in the gift.

Here's what I often recommend for the next action ‑‑ and I also include this on the landing‑page thank you as a separate element to the gift ‑‑ that is, offering a discovery call or a session, a 15 to 20 minute call with somebody so that that person can hear exactly what you need and make a fast recommendation on what service or product they have that may satisfy that need.

It gives somebody an opportunity to not be feeling in the dark or end up in a blind‑leading‑the‑blind situation. That is a nice way to give that opportunity for a new person into your life, a new prospect.

The third thing you can do is offer something directly on the thank you page. That is kind of a small product that you might offer that allows them to take advantage of perhaps a one‑time offer, a special opportunity for, hey, just coming on in and, if you get this, this will at least help to satisfy that major pain that you're obviously coming here for, without spending a lot of money.

If they take action on none of those things, we're still OK with that because we have them in our autoresponder drip‑feeds, so now off an email is going to go to welcome them and include the guide, and then another email is going to start to ‑‑ again, back to the drip‑feed education and offering of things that might satisfy specific elements.

Alzay:  Short recap here, so we can think about the final step, I guess.

I am a business with a social element. I believe that what I do is more important than just the money I make. I know that.

You've given us some mechanics of some of the basic things you need to have in place, a bit of what they look like and what you're ultimately driving people towards. Now we have a sense of that picture.

We just said that if you're comfortable doing these things, you can go ahead, but if you're not comfortable, you should get some help. I think this is a place where folks can break down or this process can break down. It's hard to figure out who can help me in my specific situation.

What advice or guidelines or some thoughts can you offer us to help us figure out who or, rather, how to choose which consultant or process or vendor can help me get what you described accomplished?

Tracy:  The first thing is, you want to know that if you're just beginning, or if you've even got a website that's not doing what you need, or you know a landing page is your next step but you just don't know what to do, you can seek out somebody like myself who you've, of course, learned the connection through Alzay.

Let's say you don't have that, then attending live events to see if there is somebody ‑‑ a speaker ‑‑ that you resonate with that has the solution for you, or finding books to at least learn about the concept.

When I wrote my book, 31 Days to Millionaire Marketing Miracles, it was simply as an educational mechanism for all businesses to understand the path. When you understand the path you need to take in Internet marketing, you know where you are and you know the next logical step.

For example, if you go running after traffic, but your website is not ready receive it ‑‑ receive, capture, or make the impact that you want ‑‑ then traffic is a waste of time. You can seek out books or things of that nature.

For within my product line, most of my products start with, "Here's where you begin," all the way to "Done for you." I literally am and the person that you could seek out and have your brand developed ‑‑ your landing page, your website, your speaking, your product, your pricing. The entire end‑to‑end scenario is what somebody like myself delivers.

Here's what you then want to think with. What's my budget and how important is speed to me in getting to the marketplace, and then how much time do I want to spend managing?

For example, someone like myself, there's no management in me. I create everything for you and I help you through every one of your business steps.

When you just hire, let's say, a graphic designer or a website designer ‑‑ all of these pieces that you need ‑‑ if you end up hiring them separately, you're going to have to be the one that stitches it all together.

They're going to be working in vacuum tubes, and they do not have the cohesive big vision from end‑to‑end. Then there's nobody to guide them with that vision because you, quite frankly, as a CEO, or as a healer, whatever it is that your skill set is, belongs in that territory.

You don't want to mire yourself down with details when you're the one who has to go out there and not only secure new client sales prospects, but you then have to deliver what you're great at.

If you try to straddle too tightly the technology line, the management of staff line, to your delivery of your service which is the important piece to get out in the world, you're going to find yourself either getting really slow into the marketplace or constantly struggling for money. It becomes, quite frankly, get the help that you need. Go all in to as deep as you can, and then simply focus on you closing sales.

Alzay:  Very good. Thank you. This helps us make smart decisions, right? So we know what happens next?

Tracy, in your business, is there a big project that you're working on right now?

Tracy:  As somebody who's been in business for 31 years, my projects revolve around constantly outperforming the version I had before, and yet it's the same program. The two that I would call my stable ones, that help somebody at the beginning of the path, are called mission critical ‑‑ sorry, is called "Message to Millions Mastery." That's a website someone can go to, messagetomillionsmastery.

Here's the beautiful part about that. If you are wondering about the path and how to do it, if you are that do‑it‑yourselfer person and if you are told how to get speaking gigs, you could get them. If you were told how to get TV and what that segment proposal should look like, then this is the program.

If you were told how do you brand yourself, what colors do you pick, how do you do a landing page step‑by‑step? If you were told all of that in full instruction, you could unfold it yourself. That's Message to Millions Mastery.

If you are the type that need help and would like it all done for you, then you can go to my website, tracyrepchuk.com and see the big scope that we talked about.

If you want to see the front of the funnel, if you want to understand better that landing page technology that I told you about, you can go to fastactionresults.com.

These are three approaches to connecting more with me but, more importantly, seeing what I've been talking about and the beauty of the landing page, because you're not overwhelmed, but the ability for me to also tell you, hey, if you're looking for the whole scope, go to Message to Millions Mastery. If you really want to see the entire enchilada, go to my master site.

Alzay:  Wonderful. Thank you. Now I want to ask this question just to close us out, but tell me if you've already answered it. If someone wants to contact you directly to get more information, is there another place they should go, or should they go to one of the sites you just referred us to?

Tracy:  They can go to those sites or if you're old school, give me a call (818) 859‑7210. This is what it's all about. Just because technology has stepped in front of us, it's a tool. It does not replace the connection that we all need.

Alzay:  Wonderful. Tracy, thank you so much for your time today. This is good work and best of luck in the future.

Tracy:  Thank you, you too, Alzay.