Can you see this illusion?
Blessings eh!
P.S. If you have a pressing need, and just want to get to growth, let’s talk, it’s on me. Email me or go here to request a conversation – https://www.chrisgoegan.com/Win
Tag Archive for: Internet marketing
How AI (Artificial Intelligence) is Changing Marketing
There is a massive shift in marketing that is going on. Well, several actually – AI, lack of people’s attention span, onslaught of marketers and competition, and the many platforms available to market your business and how they all work together.
These are major changes that need to be understood and embraced if you want to survive.
If you understand these, you will be miles ahead of the curve and you can be the 1000 lb gorilla. If you don’t, then struggles and feeling of helplessness will creep in as the market slowly slips away from you.
And if you know me, I’m a pretty even keeled guy and don’t like doom and gloom or “prosperity gospel” stuff.
I’m still an engineer at heart in many ways.
Back in 1986, as a young engineer I got to witness and take part in a tectonic shift in the manufacturing world. I was working for Ford Motor Company in Windsor Ontario and we had a big ribbon cutting ceremony.
We installed the first robot on the manufacturing line. A robot was now taking over and doing the work of a line worker. One less job.
People were saying it was just a fad, or it wasn’t going to work, or it won’t last, or it will mess up.
It didn’t. It was a massive success. Flawless performance and tremendous costs saved.
Not surprisingly, a short time after this experiment was over, robots were found all over the manufacturing plant.
Lots of jobs were lost. But that’s an inevitable part of business.
Seeing the success we had with our venture into robotics, many other companies followed suit. Soon all our subcontractors had robots. The ones that didn’t, well, it was impossible for them to survive and many went out of business.
Walk into any manufacturing plant today and you will see robotics and automation everywhere, it’s a normal part of life.
But while this change was going on, there were many lost lobs and many owners went out of business.
But some people not only survived this, but thrived.
Who?
The people that embraced technology. The engineers and the business owners that understood that this was the future and if they didn’t take advantage of it, someone else would. And whomever embraced this and made it work, they could own the market.
Fast forward to modern day and we see the same thing taking place in a different industry. But this time instead of robots, we see it with AI (artificial intelligence).
Just like robotics in the 1980’s, AI is beginning to take over today.
It’s already here on many platforms, and yet, it’s still in it’s infancy.
In the Auto Industry in the 1980’s, the Big 3 were Ford, Chrysler and GM. In the marketing world in 2018, the Big 3 are Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Google is probably the leader with AI. Then Facebook. And LinkedIn is still in it’s infancy in many ways, and is coming out of the 1800’s. :)
If you embrace this tectonic shift in marketing and AI . . .
. . . if you are the market leader, then you can gain even more ground on the competition and leave them in your dust.
. . . If you are not the market leader, then this could be your chance to sneak up out of nowhere and blow past them.
Depending on the market, 99% of the market can go to 1% of the companies.
We are entering a new season of marketing.
Are you prepared?
Watch for my next email where I’ll tell you about the company Google bought for half a billion dollars (yep, $500 million). This company had no product, no profit, and they sat around playing Atari video games all day. But they had the future.
If you want to jump on opportunity, you’ll want to know about this. It excites the marketer and engineer in me!
Until then.
Blessings eh!
P.S. If you have a challenge in your business, we offer a free no-obligation 15 minute consultation where we will tackle and give you perspective on demolishing the #1 problem affecting your business. You can get more information here… Click Here
P.P.S. There are two options for working with me directly:
Option #1: Done-For-You
This is the crème-de-la-crème. If you are someone who is discerning and is used to getting the best, then this was created for you. You work directly with me and my team. We take you through the entire process and do all the hard work for you. We have an incredibly user-friendly system that will build your client acquisition system faster than you could ever do it on your own. I only work with a limited number of select clients at a time on this and you have to qualify. You can ask me any question you need and we’ll build something remarkable together. Learn more here: https://www.chrisgoegan.com/Win
Option #2: Done-With-You
This is where we work together, either one-on-one, or in a small group setting, where we roll up our sleeves and work together with set objectives that you implement to build your Client Acquisition System. I only accept 10 clients into this program at a time and we have to make sure it’s a good match for both of us. Learn more here.
Many people are looking for the homerun when it comes to their marketing. Sometimes it happens right away, more often it doesn’t.
Many people are looking for the homerun when it comes to their marketing. Sometimes it happens right away, more often it doesn’t.
Here’s a case study where something spectacular happened for a client that had no list, no market and no time.
The work involved to do this:
- Was NOT glamorous
- Did NOT involve any new technology
- Had nothing to do with a pretty website (while a pretty website helps, in this situation the site was kind of ugly)
- Did NOT involve a big list (the client had no list, this was done with C-O-L-D traffic)
So how did he pull in multiple six figures from a tiny adspend?
The client was an industry leader in the real estate industry and wanted to fill seminars to show people how to invest.
He was already somewhat successful and he had already started putting on seminars. He had marketing that was working ok and returning a positive ROI.
His goal was simple: Target better clientele that has cash.
He wasn’t doing any internet marketing and was thinking that he was missing opportunity. He was.
Now this posed a new kind of problem. There really wasn’t much internet traffic available. The city where the seminar was in had a population of less than 1 million people. Not an ideal situation. And there were maybe 100 people searching for real estate seminars in that city, and of those 100, only a few might attend.
If 100% of the people searching for seminars came to his website (they wouldn’t) and if 1% signed up, then that would be 1 person. This math doesn’t work. The client sold seminar tickets and coaching programs and needed waaayyyyyyy more than 1 person to make $300,000.
Quick recap – no list, very small number of people searching, no presence on social media, small geographical location and with a seminar being a week away, not enough time to do a grass-roots program, and needing to get a lot of people to the seminar.
So What Happened?
The client employed our Engineered Marketing approach (plus he allowed us to help him). We focused on his TCP – his Three Circles of Wealth – Traffic, Conversion and Profitability. 
Traffic – we came up with some creative ways to drive traffic and visitors to his website to the tune of getting 1000-2000 visitors per day to his site (compare to conventional approaches that would typically yield 20 visitors per day).
Result: the client added $150,000 in revenues
Conversion – this is where one of the big gains happened. He already had a good website that was working. He asked our opinion and we noticed some incongruencies. The message and offer on his webpage was off relative to the content and value people received at the seminar and what was mentioned on his website. It was a subtle yet significant change.
We had also developed and tested numerous different hot buttons on the ads we were running and found some to be “hotter” than others.
I engineered a strategy and sent the client 5 texts and 2 emails outlining the changes that should be made to the headline, to the images on the site and to the copy.
The client took the suggestions and implemented them. It took him 30 minutes.
Result: client doubled his revenue from $150,000 to $300,000
Profitability – the numbers shown above were remarkably profitable. Client acquisition cost was peanuts and ROI was a large multiple of this. (Sorry, for confidentiality reasons I can’t disclose actual numbers :)
Time for the dramatic close to this post… drum roll please….
If you would like to have changes like this in your business, then focus on your TCP (Three Circles of Wealth). There are opportunities that exist in your business right now.
Oh, if you’re a numbers guy (gal) figure out how much the client make when he repeated this monthly (which he did). Now figure out what could happen in your business…
It was NOT a stroke of luck. He had a well engineered client acquisition system.
Blessings eh!
Please Note: This is an actual case study and numbers were provided by the client. Results will vary from person to person based on their unique situation.
How To Be Unstoppable – pure rubbish!!!
… or is it???
I see so many promotions and topics with the same underlying theme – “How To Be Unstoppable”. I see them in my email inbox, my mailbox, on the web, tv – seems like everywhere I turn there’s some guru promoting this.
I know I’m not the only one that sees this. And a shameless confession, it has a certain appeal to me. The thought of being “the guy” or being able to carve out your own destiny stirs emotions up in me. I see images of being applauded, and revered, and respected, and sought after, oh, and did I say “wealthy, happy and successful?”.
It also stirs something else up in me… pride and ego. And those two monsters have taken many people down, myself included.
So, instead of being “the guy” and being unstoppable, I’d rather be a guy who makes the best use of his gifts and talents, is diligent, seeks wisdom, plans and takes action and God willing, achieves his goals. (interesting observation – the more I do that, the easier everything else seems to be)
Now in my business, would I like it to be unstoppable?
Yes!!
… as long as I don’t have to sacrifice my family, friends (or anything else dear to me) on the alter.
For the record, in my opinion, unless you’re God, I don’t think anything can ever be “unstoppable”. There’s always something seen or unseen that can take you down.
So instead of “unstoppable”….
What If Your Business Could Be Stronger, Rock Solid, Able To Withstand Numerous Blows And Still Keep Producing – Would that relieve some tension or make you grin?
Well the good news here is that it can.
How do you do that?
… you get rid of the silly notion that there is some magic pill to swallow or some silver bullet or your business can be changed in the next 60 seconds or less. That is pure rubbish.
What isn’t, is you can roll up your sleeves and WORK.
Imagine….
- setting a goal and going after it with focus and determination
- researching the market and competition to see what’s out there
- finding a niche you can dominate and crafting out a clear, concise USP (Unique Selling Proposition) that separates you from the competition
- developing a strategy to attacking the market
- creating a compelling sales conversion process
- making an irresistible offer to get your prospect or client to say “yes”
- Now picture adding 5-10 different lead generation techniques to get your message in front of the exact right people at the exact right time
Seems like a lot of work doesn’t it? Well, it is. That’s why most people won’t do this. That’s why for the few that do, they can reap most of the spoils. Did you know that 95% of the profits in a market will go to less than 5% of the businesses?
Now if you decided to be different and if you did this, how would you feel about your business? How would you feel about it’s ability to weather the storms that are guaranteed to come? Would you be confident in being able to take time off, take trips, plan your retirement, get involved in charity, or how about mentally being there for your family instead of constantly thinking about business?
If you go after something with wisdom, focus and determination and WORK on the right things, it’s amazing what you will be able to accomplish.
Blessings,
P.S. If you have a challenge in your business, we offer a free no-obligation 15 minute consultation where we will tackle and give you perspective on demolishing the #1 problem affecting your business. You can get more information here… Click Here eh!
Goal Setting to Achieve Exciting and Sustained Growth Without Burnout and Fatigue
It’s that time of the year. Where stockings are hung by the chimney with care – and you’re madly scrambling around finding Christmas presents, planning menus, endless shopping and wrapping, working to close the year out, and planning for next year. I don’t know about you, but it tires me out!!
At this time of year, business owners set goals for next year.
Here’s what’s typically done – they answer one question “What do I want my sales to be next year? . . . or, How much do I want to make next year?”
And there’s nothing wrong with this. There’s usually growth, not necessarily significant growth, but growth. Or there are significant growth goals that are met with hard work and determination but end up just demanding more time from the business owner and eventually wearing him or her out.
Have you ever wondered what successful business owners do when setting goals? Or, put another way, how should goal planning be approached?
Goal setting should be done from a bigger perspective and worked backwards to short term focused goals.
But there’s a twist. Something else that should be an essential part of your goals if you want to experience exciting and sustained growth without burnout and fatigue.
What is it?
I’ll cover that in a moment, but first, it’s important that goal setting planning should be done in light of your overarching business objective.
My friend and private client, Michael Gerber, author of the mega best-selling book “The E-Myth Revisited” and his new bestseller “Beyond The E-Myth”, says that everything should be done based on your dream, vision, purpose and mission. Everything should be done in light of your dream.
If your dream is clear and defined, then wonderful, you are ahead of most everyone else. (I recommend reading Michael’s new book “Beyond The Emyth“.) But what if you’re dream is not clearly defined?
Start with answering these questions:
- What were your sales / revenues this year?
- What’s the fantasy for your business? What would you like it to be in 5 or 10 years? (pick a time frame that resonates with you)
- If it were 3 years from now, looking back to today, what would your business be like for you to feel really darn good about it?
This will give some bigger perspective.
If you want to experience exciting and sustained growth without burnout and fatigue, what do you do?
Answer these two questions:
- If I want to grow 50% next year, what do I have to do differently? What do I have to personally stop doing, or do less of, or have someone else do?
- What are the core essential things I have to do to grow 100%?
When I ask this question, clients typically say things like “I need to stop taking all the phone calls. I need to hire a personal assistant. I need to get organized. I need to stop getting involved in every little problem that seems so monumental at the time.” And the list goes on.
More importantly, they start thinking about their business in a different way. They start thinking about having great people and great systems in place.
So let me ask you, what systems do you need to get you to where you want to go?
- If you had great systems and great people delivering your deliverable, creating a 5-star experience for your customers, would that help?
- If you had a great sales and marketing system in place, delivering an awesome supply of leads and customers, AND if it is being manned and run by great people, would that help?
- If you had a great management system in place, being run by great people, so you would know exactly what is going on in your business, would that help?
- If you had a great organizational growth system in place, so that your leadership team is focused, with all oars in the water pulling in the same direction at the same time, would that help?
So while you’re setting your growth goals, also set a goal for what systems you want to get locked down next year.
If you look at things from this perspective, 2017 will be a fantastic year. And beyond that, 2018 and 2019 will be remarkable.
Make next year a great year, and have fun doing it.
Blessings eh!
P.S. We Simplify Small Business Growth. Our core focus is to Help Grow Small Businesses with Great Systems while Building Great People. If you need any help, with your goals or putting systems in place, let’s begin the conversation. It’s free. Go here to request a consultation: https://www.chrisgoegan.com/win
P.P.S. We have a number of new resources and training to help you simplify the growth of your business. We have a pilot program running to have a sales and marketing system running in your business in 90 days. If you are interested in this, watch your inbox in early January, or click on the link above to request a consultation.
Are Your Emails Leaving Money On The Table?
In This Article I’ll Share One of the Most Overlooked and Mis-Used Ways to Increase Sales. It’s also something your competition will most likely NOT do.
One of the most underutilized marketing tools in businesses these days is the use of emails.
If you have 5000 people on an email list and you increase the effectiveness of your results by 5%, then you will have 250 MORE people that want to buy from you. Multiply 250 x how much a customer is worth to you. If you sell a higher end product or are a professional service business, and a customer is worth $10k to you, then you are leaving up to $2,500,000 on the table.
What about if you sell supplements or info products and have a bigger list?
Let’s say you have a list of 50,000 people, you sell a $50 product and 15% of the people open emails. Now suppose you increase results by 5%, then that means you have an EXTRA 2500 people reading your emails. (Please note, I typically like to see 30% open rate on emails so I downplayed the example here)
If an extra 2500 people that are already on your list but are ignoring your emails (or worse, you’re not emailing them), if these people buy your $50 product, then you have added up to $125,000 in sales.
To get these results, it does not require adspend and it multiplies the effectiveness of everything else you do. You just have to become a little better at something you are already doing.
Do I have your attention? Do you want to take some of that money off the table?
Everyone is always looking for the “next thing”. Since we have expertise in helping clients find, bring, nurture and sell people, clients always ask me “what is the next thing we should do?”
Here are some numbers that will boggle your mind and cause your pulse to quicken…
In my friend Ian Brodie’s book titled “Email Persuasion”, he cited these stats: “When the Direct Marketing Association studied the effectiveness of various types of marketing, email came out way on top with a return on investment of around 41 to 1. Nearly twice that of any other approach.
When data analytics firm Custora published the results of their 4-year study into the online buying patterns of over 72 million customers across 14 different industries, they showed that over 40 times as many purchases came from links in emails than from Facebook or Twitter.”
Ok. so how do you do it?
…. with effective email marketing.
Let me tell you a story…
I suffer from a constant conundrum. In my professional life working with clients, my tendency is to be bottom line pure information. In my personal life, I like to laugh, play, have fun and tell stories, especially with my wife and 4 kids.
So what’s the conundrum?
Someone told me a long time ago that “people buy from people”. If the whole relationship I have with my clients and my email list is purely professional and purely informational, then how much of a relationship do I have?
If I’m so focused on facts, figures and “how-to’s” (all important) that I forget to be personable with clients and my email list, then a relationship is NOT created.
I recently had someone say to me, “I wanted to work with you because of the pictures of your family on your website. You look like a nice guy that knows his stuff.” People will come to you for your knowledge and stick with you for the substance of who you are. (That’s how it is with dating and marriage too isn’t it?)
Shameless confession, I used to write a weekly email newsletter diligently for years until I got burnt out. It was great at the beginning because I started by telling stories and entertaining while educating. Then I switched to “How to’s”…
- How to double the number of leads from your website with one strategy you can implement in the next hour
- How to get a continuous and never-ending flow of high quality leads to your professional practice for $20 each
- How to 10x traffic and conversions while cutting costs and minimizing risk
- How to – ugh, if this is all you do you will get burned out too!!!
I got tired of the how to’s. I got burned out. I wasn’t having fun. I was beginning to feel like a mechanical robot.
And when I was doing purely “how-to’s”, the feedback and comments I got dwindled significantly – you could say it fell faster than a fat boy falling off a cliff! :)
… meaning – the people I was emailing got burned out too.
To make your email marketing effective, yes, have pitch content, have “how-to’s”, and please, please, please, please, please have the personal touch.
When you do this, you will be pleasantly surprised at how your sales (and enjoyment) will increase.
To your success,
Blessings eh!
P.S. Opt-outs are ok. They will happen. If people opt-out because you are being who you are, then what are the chances they would stick around and purchase from you and be a good client or customer?
“Guest Posting for SEO is Done”
Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s webspam team shook the internet on January 20th when he said that he’d “expect Google’s webspam team to take a pretty dim view of guest blogging going forward.” (you can see the post on his personal blog here)
If you are posting articles and guest posts as a way to grow SEO rankings and links, you could be toast.
So who is affected by this?
It’s the low quality blog networks that feel the impact.
A lot of SEO companies will use blog networks and link farms as a way to get links to gain SEO rankings. They have built a number of sites, or have relationships with people that have a number of sites, and they use those sites as places to put articles (that no-one will read) for the sole purpose of getting a link back to the main site being promoted. The more links, the higher the ranking. Well, that’s how it used to work. Not anymore.
If you are doing this – stop. If your SEO company is dong this – stop. Like Panda and Penguin updates that devastated many businesses, this impact is being felt by many.
So what should you do?
The people that get into trouble are the ones that look for shortcuts to game the system. The people that win are those that know that the shortcut is to provide quality information and content in places that people will read it.
Quality blogs that are careful with link text are doing fine. We have not seen any negative impact with our SEO.
Search Engine Land, from their post “Stick A Fork In It, Guest Blogging is Done”, added this: In response to a couple hundred comments on his post, and perhaps to the discussion on social media, Cutts has added some extra information clarifying the intent of his post. He says he’s not referring to “high-quality multi-author blogs” and that he added “for SEO” to the title of his post:
“There are still many good reasons to do some guest blogging (exposure, branding, increased reach, community, etc.). Those reasons existed way before Google and they’ll continue into the future. And there are absolutely some fantastic, high-quality guest bloggers out there. I changed the title of this post to make it more clear that I’m talking about guest blogging for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes.”
I’m personally happy that Matt Cutts and Google are getting rid of the spammy kind of articles & guest posts. It will help those that write real content and put it on real blogs to provide real value and build real relationships with real people.
Immediate steps you can take:
- Write high value content that people would be thrilled to put on their sites
- Make sure the sites the content goes on has a following of real people that you would want to educate or have as clients
- Have a way for people to get to your site to connect with you to get more information if they are interested (it’s ok to have a link back to your site)
- Avoid any and all SEO’s that do article submissions and guest posts purely for the sake of getting links
- Be VERY strategic about your SEO
Last point: the purpose of SEO is to get ranked high on Google in order to get more leads and customers. If you are doing a guest post on high quality blogs that are read by high-quality prospects that reach out and ask for more information or inquire about using your services, that’s accomplishing your end goal. No?
Blessings,
P.S. If you have questions or want help with your situation, SEO, or want more leads or customers, then email me at Chris@ChrisGoegan.com or Click Here to Request a Free Consultation
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Is this the year of the nerdy scientist?
2013 is over and in the books. 2014 has just begun and is full of opportunities.
I’m not one to make New Year Resolutions. Earlier in life I did but when I looked back I found that most of the resolutions I made bored me so I wouldn’t stick with them.
Now, instead I make goals and evaluate and adjust them continuously throughout the year.
Whether you make resolutions or not, the point is it’s important to have goals and to have a plan.
From the 100’s of businesses I’ve worked with one of the biggest and most common problems is that businesses lack a plan. Sure they have goals like, “I want to take my business from $5 million to $10 million” or “I want to launch a new venture using the internet”.
Those are good goals. We can work with that.
Where it falls short is the plan – how to make those goals happen.
Speaking of falling short, (I’m 5’6″ and have been accused of falling short :) just about every business I’ve looked at over the last few years has had a major flaw when it comes to internet marketing.
They underestimated how hard it is to get things working. Internet marketing is HARD WORK.
Most people don’t like to hear that. That’s ok, most people don’t like reality either.
As you know I am a marketing consultant and we specialize in helping clients agressively grow their core business or launch new ventures into competitive spaces. We have solved many difficult problems where many have fallen short. And everything we do is based on a proprietary process called “Engineered Marketing”.
Why Engineered Marketing? If you recall, it stemmed from before when I started my career off as an engineer designing and building automated systems in the manufacturing and aerospace world.
We take the strategy, technical knowledge and the love of data of an engineer and combine it with selling in person, and selling online, to help clients duplicate their results.
So why am I telling you all this? (ok, part of it is a cheap plug for what we do!) But the other reason is, those ingredients are vital to be successful online.
My beautiful wife Naomi sent me an article. Here’s what she said “This made me think of you. You’re the best of both worlds – and then some!”
It’s nice hearing those words. How did I get so lucky to marry her? (And yes, that was another cheap plug. She gets all my articles and I’ll take any opportunity to score some points with her! :)
Here’s the article she sent. It’s relevant to your success: Click here: Is this the year of the nerdy scientist?
Blessings eh!
How a Client Lost 1800 People That Were Registered for His Webinar
When you read that headline your first two reactions should be:
1. Ouch!!
and
2. Hey I’d like to have 1800 people registered for a webinar!
There are 2 big lessons here, so pay attention. I’ll also tell you why I wrote this post.
Getting 1800 people to sign up for a webinar was no small feat. It’s a huge success and a lot went into it. Needless to say, the client was happy.
Then I got the panicked call…
… “Chris, we’ve got a MAJOR problem. All 1800 people are gone. How do we get them back in?”
Me: “Ugh. What happened?”
Client: “I deleted them.”
Me: “How?”
Client: “I clicked the wrong button and now they’re gone.”
The webinar was a day away so we had a little over 24 hours to get this fixed. So a few questions later I figured out what happened. We had a series of webinars scheduled. The plan was to add the next webinar on to the end of the one we just completed that way everyone would be registered for the entire series. A few simple mouse clicks and it was smooth sailing.
Instead of that, the client created a brand new webinar series and closed the other one out. All 1800 people that were signed up for the series would no longer be registered since the client mistakenly closed it out. He figured it was a new webinar, so no big deal, he would create a new webinar and life would go on and everyone would be signed up. We were using GoToWebinar and if you’ve ever used it, you know that when you create a brand new webinar EVERYONE has to resubscribe. NOT an ideal situation.
Makes for an awkward moment “Uh, sorry, we goofed and deleted everyone so please sign up again. Oh, and by the way, we’re really smart and experts at what we do” … I’m sure more than a few people would be lost.
So I went in, cleaned up the mess and got the series back on track. The next problem was that we had to get 1800 names back in.
And there is no automated way to do this. Nope this was going to require some good old fashioned manual data entry. Posts were put in to my wife’s homeschool community for mom’s or kids that wanted to make some money, and the overseas team was working around the clock to get everyone back in.
The good news, we got everyone re-input with minimal issues. After a VERY frantic 24 hours, all 1800 people were registered once again.
Here’s why I wrote this post:
My client said, “Chris, this looks so easy that anyone can do it. Much like all of internet marketing. Internet marketing looks SO EASY but the reality is that it’s not. There are so many ways where you can get into trouble. Just look at what I did! You should really write a post about this to tell people that it’s not as easy as it looks”
This was from a client that is incredibly smart and VERY successful – much like most of my clients. Most of my clients have strong thriving businesses they are looking to take to the next level or are starting new ventures. Most have built successful 7 figure businesses and some have run Multi-Billion dollar companies.
BIG LESSON #1 – Internet marketing is NOT as easy as it looks. There are a lot of snake oil salesman that prey on ignorance and tell you it’s easy to make big money online. The reality is that while it APPEARS easy, it’s NOT. It takes a lot of hard work, understanding your market, having a great value proposition and strategy and using the right media in the right way to reach your market. It also involves understanding technology.
There are so many moving pieces that from experience working with hundreds of entrepreneurs and business owners, the only thing that is easy, is to mess things up. Just like this client did.
BIG LESSON #2 – you really need someone that knows what the heck they’re doing to work with you. All my clients are smart enough to figure this stuff out on their own, and I’m sure you are smart enough to figure this stuff out – EVENTUALLY. The problem is most people are so busy being successful that they don’t have time to figure things out on their own. If you have an hour a month, you can put someone else’s expertise to work for you to make more. Also, you can cut years off the learning curve by having an expert on your side.
Very rarely do I work with someone that is brand new to internet marketing. The reason why, is that they haven’t been burned badly enough yet and they fall for a bright shiny object that is pitched at them. Remember, fish chase after bright shiny objects. They also end up dead on the dinner plate.
The internet is a remarkable way to get business. And webinars are fantastic.
I would go into detail about how to get 1800 people to sign up for a webinar, but I’ll save that for another day!
If you had 1800 people registered for a webinar, how much revenue would that generate for you?
If you can’t wait for that article, or have a big goal you want to hit, then click here and sign up for a consultation.
Hope you enjoyed this.
Blessings eh!
.
Lies Lies Lies!!
I’m in the mood for a good rant today…
Tell Me Lies, tell me sweet little lies
~Tell Me Lies, Tell me tell me lies~
Oh no no, you can’t disguise
~You can’t disguise, no you can’t disguise~
Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies
It’s a song by Fleetwood Mac called “Tell Me Lies”. Maybe you’ve heard it? Catchy tune. (if you know it, bet you’re singing it in your head!)
So what does it have to do with anything?
I’m fed up with the lies, the pure garbage that is being fed to people and unscrupulous marketing.
… let me tell you a story…
I stepped into the world of touch screen phones. Yep, I got tired of waiting for Blackberry to come out with a new phone for T-Mobile and upgraded into the new HTC Sensation. It’s a touch screen, big display, 4G, has all the bells and whistles, android, easy to use – I love it and so does my wife. My kids love “Angry Birds” – wow what an addictive waste of time that game is eh?!!
I get my first bill and trying to be a good steward I review it to make sure there are no surprises.
Wrong.
2 bogus charges. Ugh. That means I’ve gotta call customer service. Fortunately T-Mobile has great customer service. I usually get a cheery, delightful person who is happy to help. Today was no exception. I got Jessica, a pure delight. She reviewed the charges in question with me.
The first was for insurance. When I got the phone, the sales guy pushed this hard on me. I declined several times and he persisted like a battering ram taking out a castle door. He said “it’s free for 30 days” so I relented and said ok.
Guess what? … it wasn’t free. Not only that, the T-Mobile rep said they have no authority to do that.
My Blood Starts To Boil
The second bogus charge: there’s a monthly charge of $9.99 to allow us to download ringtones from a 3rd party. Neither me or my wife signed up for it. Some cheesy 3rd party company bogussly (is that a word?!!) spammed us some cryptic texts. Irritated, we replied for them to stop.
Well, I guess they didn’t and instead they signed us up for their service and we got dinged for it. Purely unethical in my books. I’m sure they make a tidy profit, afterall how many people have cell phones and how many times do people check their phone bills? The T-Mobile rep said that this kind of stuff unfortunately happens a lot. And to cancel this bogus service, we have to contact the 3rd party and have them remove it. You can be sure I’ll check my bill next month!!
Happy Ending to This Story
Jessica “Your Friendly Neighborhood T-Mobile Rep” to the rescue!! – she reversed both charges and got us all squared away. She made it such a pleasant experience. And I’m grateful for her.
Thank you Jessica.
What Does This Have To Do With Marketing?
I have clients come to me time and time again looking for advice. I get contacted out of the blue by clients, some have gone months without reaching out to me and suddenly they want advice on a variety of topics – internet marketing, SEO, Social Media, Facebook, website design, landing pages, USP’s, the list goes on.
Why do they contact me?
Just like the garbage I had to deal with on my phone bill, there’s so much crap being thrown around out there about marketing. There are a lot of wolves in sheep’s clothing.
YOU MUST KNOW THIS AND BEWARE
I’ve had clients Adwords accounts turned off because they were seduced, I’ve had clients waste THOUSANDS of dollars changing their site to appease someone jibber-jabbing about SEO (I’ve got a great story about a test we did where we got multiple listings on the first page of Google for a term that has over 4,100,000,000 – yes, you read that right, multiple first page listing out of OVER 4 BILLION SEARCHES!! – there were some radically strange things going on that we uncovered but I’ll save that story one for another day.)
I’ve had clients come to me that have wasted tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars on “guru’s” and other consultants. And within the first few minutes we could identify the problem.
Bottom line: you must be able to decipher fact from fiction and the truth from fantasy and seduction. If you can’t you’re doomed and will waste money, and even worse, massive amounts of time.
With the exhaustive expansion of online media and ways of getting traffic, if you can’t decipher this on your own, then I suggest you have a trusted adviser you can turn to. The bible says there’s safety in a multitude of counselors. Whether you read the bible or not, this is good common sense. Who are your trusted advisers?
And with all the seduction and wolves in sheep’s clothing out there, sometimes messages like this get missed.
A problem I have is I don’t have a bright shiny object I pitch.
What I do have is:
- time tested and proven, yet cutting edge and radically different methods for increasing sales
- what’s working now
- and straight answers for today’s problems
I guess that’s why people keep coming back to me for advice and allow me to help.
In your business, your clients and prospects are getting pitched garbage and B.S. too. If you help them decipher what’s real and what’s fantasy, they will keep coming back and refer more business to you.
Blessings,
P.S. Amazing how a good rant can improve your mood!