You create your first website and hangout your digital open for business sign. Hell you even start to get a little traffic. But no sales yet.  Weeks go buy and the cash isn’t flowing the way it seems to be for everyone but you. The shadow of doubt begins to set in. You wonder why people are buying your competitors product/service and not yours.

Here’s What Most People Do

I view business like building a house. It takes planning, both long term and short term. Although I am not an expert at building a house, it does make for a great metaphor.

Can you build a house without creating a foundation?

Yep, you bet you can!

Will your house last long?

Uhhh, no! It’s going to tumble over eventually.

 The Business Mindset 

I use to be one of those people who jumped from one business idea to another. In fact there was a time when I was trying to run several different businesses at one time (MLM businesses). I made a little money, but I never seemed to do as well as others. I justified this by saying they were just lucky. Or they must have had money to start with.

After more failures than I care to count, I figured it out. I had what is known as the “Get Rich Quick Mindset.” I have never known anyone to be successful with this type of mindset. Once I understood this, (I mean truly understood) my success started to grow and grow.

3 Spheres of Success

There are three spheres of success:

1. Inspiration
2. Innovation and
3. Motivation

Inspiration

This is the stage where you first come up with an idea. The good thing about inspiration is that it can strike at anytime. While taking a shower, watching television, even while driving down the street. Every human being on earth at one time or another has inspiration. However it is here at the first sphere were things die for the masses. This also leads us to our third sphere.

 Innovation 

Innovation is the second sphere and the realm that very few actually get to. Innovation is when you actually act upon your inspiration. Its when you take your idea to the next level. An idea is useless until you take massive action.

As soon as I get an idea, I either record it on my iPhone, mind map it out on my iPad or the whiteboard in my office. If you want you can use a free online service called bubbl.us.

You can use it for free and save ‘X’ number of sheets. They also offer various paid services that only cost a few bucks a month.

Once you have had your idea, and you have created a blueprint. Its time to put everything together and make it a reality, its time for sphere three…

Motivation

Motivation is the glue that keeps everything together. Its the fire that keeps pushing your forward on daily basis. Motivation is what keeps you going even when everything seems to be going wrong.

My motivation is the feeling I get knowing that I have made a difference. I love it every time I receive an email or a phone call from someone on my list who has had a breakthrough.

There is nothing on earth like being able to do what you love and to actually be able to get paid for doing it. This is the feeling that I hope to share with each and every individual on my list.

Practice Makes Perfect

I think it was Tony Robbins who said that repetition is the mother of all skill. As far as I know there is no such thing as the perfect plan. You make a plan. Execute the plan. Then make adjustments according to the results. Keep adjusting, and tracking your results. You will notice that things will keep improving, and you will reach your ultimate goal, whatever that may be for you.

 Master Your Craft

Although I outsource many of my daily task, I first had to understand them. There are many pieces to running any successful business. I am constantly learning and improving my strategies.

If you were to go and watch some of my old YouTube videos you will see where I recommended one thing then several months later it would appear that I have contradicted myself. That is far from the case. The market changes, what worked today, may not work tomorrow, and I only know that because I am constantly studying, testing and tracking my results.

It is important that you understand, having a successful business is more than just studying marketing, or copywriting etc. Read material like, “Think and Grow Rich”, “The World’s Greatest Salesmen”, or “The Alchemist” just to name a few.

I will conclude this post on this note.

You should spend more time working on your business and not in your business.

If you have spent any time what-so-ever online then you know that everyone tries to pretend as if SEO is difficult. The truth is – its not! However it is time consuming and there is no magic button to press that will do the work for you. I view SEO as being like a game of chess – it is easy to learn, but takes a life time to master. Continue reading and because I am about to share with you my gloves of strategy guaranteed to work or you can punch me in the face.

If you really want to know how to search engine optimize like a rock star start with understanding your target audience. That does not mean what you think or your opinion, this game is all about the numbers. If you have no numbers you are destine to fail. So the question becomes, how do you find the numbers? Very simple and free solution… Yahoo has a tool called clues.yahoo.com its free and it totally kicks ass.

Once you have gathered factual information about your target audience i.e. how much money they make, which age groups are more interested in your product/service, what they search for when looking for your site, you are ready to rock and roll. Fire up your keyword research tool and start finding keyword phrases that you can easily dominate based on what you know about your target audience now.

Lets say that you are hypothetically promoting 3D televisions, and according to “Clues Yahoo” your target audience are males between the age 25 and 35 who reside in Virginia Beach. You will want to create highly targeted content based around this information and your keyword phrase. For example I would create a page for a specific name brand such as “Sony 3D Televisions” I would make it a review on the various sizes and models that can be found in Virginia Beach.

Create a quick report along the lines, “25 Things You Should Know About 3D TV’s Before You Buy One” give it away free on your site to build your list. Give reviews inside the report with your affiliate link attached (in the report be straight up about your affiliate links). REALLY DO THE RESEARCH – you want your report to be of high quality, not something that you just put together or copied and pasted.

Just like you would create individual pages of content for your site based on your keyword phrases. You will do the same thing for your report, except you are going to create landing pages based on the various keyword phrases. All that this strategy does is increase your chances of generating revenue.

Here is an extremely simple rule for guaranteed on-page optimization results. All you have to do is reverse engineer the top 10 competitors page for your keyword phrase. If they are utilizing meta tags, you do the same but do it better. If they are using pages with a lot of content then you do the same. Check the number of backlinks that they are using, and do the same but better.

I am sure that I could go on and on on this subject matter since I love it so much. However this is suppose to be an article not a book If you want to learn some more competition crushing strategies check out my new FREE report entitled What Elvis Can Teach You About Internet Marketing (I know that title is crazy huh.) Go download my report now and learn exactly how to search engine optimize like a rock star.

Keep in mind I have no way of knowing the size of your business, so I am going to give you the general idea of what you need to do to make your marketing dollars work for you. It does not matter if you have a mom and pop diner or you own a successful dentistry franchise, the information in this article will save you hundreds if not thousands of dollars, and you can instantly apply some of the strategies to your business right now.

Why Your Current Marketing Plan Sucks

Make a list of what type of marketing you are currently doing, i.e. do you have business cards, fliers, newspaper ads, do you have a website etc… After making a complete list of everything that you are currently doing to get your name out in the market place, its time to analyze what you have.

It is important to distinguish your marketing goals. Are you trying to convert your leads into sales, or are you just trying to name brand your company, product, or service. In this article the marketing strategy I am going to focus on is geared towards converting prospects into sales.

Lets start with the gatekeeper or the person that answers your phone. When you receive a call it is IMPORTANT that you ask the caller how did they hear about your business. This is a form of tracking and will give you a good indication of what advertising method is working best for you. You should keep track of where your leads are coming from. Lets say that the majority of your leads are coming from an Adwords campaign. You can now begin split testing to attempt to increase your conversion ratio even more. When it comes to marketing you should always be trying to increase your results.

If you are advertising in your local newspaper or running television ads on your local cable company you will need a means to track your leads. You should ALWAYS give a call to action in your ad. You want the prospect to take immediate action by either visiting your website or giving you a call.

I already covered what you should do when someone calls, so there is no need to reiterate that point. If you are running a print ad, and you are sending the reader to your website you should send them to a landing page specifically setup for that particular ad. For example – lets say you were running a special on a massage therapy session. You will want to place your landing page in a sub-directory something like this – www.yourdomainname.com/msnad. There are pros and cons to how the naming structure of the landing page should be, however that is a lesson for another blog post.

Once the prospect visits your landing page you now have the ability to track the number of people who visit your page as compared to how many actually respond to your call to action and convert to a lead. Lets say for every hundred people that visit your landing page, one will follow your call to action. Once you have gathered a little statistical information you can now begin split-testing. Your goal is to always improve your conversion ratio.

Split-Testing Online

With your landing pages in place and traffic going to them – it is time to do a little split-testing. In order to get a landing page up and running as fast as possible I will build a quick landing page, with text, a few images, and a call to action. Once prospects begin visiting the page and I have gathered some information as far as the number of daily visitors, leads etc. I will backup the page and replace it with a new improved one. The change can be something as simple as changing the headline, to something as complexed as adding video. If my new page receives better results the process will start all over again with split-testing a new page. If the new page does not convert as well, I will put up the original page and build a new landing page and the testing starts all over again.

The Business Card Conundrum

People are always giving me their business cards, and I must say that the majority of them are designed wrong. If what I am about to say to you hurts your feelings, I apologize, however the truth is the truth. If your business card has a huge photo of yourself, and a bunch of numbers to contact you, go slap yourself in the face right now.

Here is the best advise that you are going to ever receive regarding marketing your business. When it comes to marketing there is one question that all of your marketing campaigns should answer… W.I.I.F.M. That stands for, “Whats In It For Me?” That is what your prospect is subconsciously asking themselves. In fact it is all that they care about. If you start to develop your marketing with that thought in mind you will notice and immediate change in your conversion ratio.

Instead of having a business card with a lot of useless information and wasted space try this – try putting a website address with a special offer, or instant access to discount offers etc. It will depend on what type of business you are in. You should also utilize both sides of the business card. I could go on, and on about the graphic design of your ads but that is also is a discussion for another time. If you have any questions you can contact me and I will be happy to answer them for you.

Developing A Marketing Plan Of Your Own

Do not dive into the marketing game head first. Every marketing piece should have its own landing page, and tracking in place such as Google Analytics. If you are not familiar with Google Analytics I recommend that you visit www.google.com/analytics and start reading, it is a must for anyone that has an online presence.

Use www.clues.yahoo.com to do some research and get to know your targeted audience a little better. Do not assume that you already know your market, this is a huge mistake that a lot of business owners make both on and offline.

Make a list of what motivates your prospect to buy products and or services. Answer the question of how can you solve a problem or need that the prospect may have. It is also important that you keep in mind that people love to buy, but they do not like being sold to.

Final Thoughts

Before you begin spending your hard earned advertising dollars, you always want to know the demographics in which the advertising will be distributed. I see many smaller businesses waste thousands of dollars using a form of advertising which is to large for their current budget to bare.

If your not utilizing the full potential of your website now is the time to take advantage of it. Use your website to generate life long leads by collecting the users personal information. This will allow you to market to them over and over again.

Tap into existing customers by asking them for referrals or giving them some sort of incentive to spread the word. Even in todays world of technology, word of mouth is still the best form of advertising.

And last but not least ALWAYS PLACE A CALL OF ACTION IN YOUR ADS.

Please take a second to leave your comments below regarding this article. If you love it… GREAT, If you think that it was stupid hey its all good, either way I want to hear form you!

rubin communications group

My son and I had a blast last night at Media Fest 2010. Normally I have to travel halfway across the United States to network and meet such wonderful people in my field or related fields.

Frank Gonzalez ( frankg@helloworld.com / upyoursaleswithvideo.com ) had his booth looking like a rock concert. There was so many people waiting in line to see his video based technology, you would have thought that Carlos Santana was doing a free concert or something. Frank was doing an excellent job at demonstrating the power that video and the Internet can bring to your business.

Damien Steiner Smith from “GuerrillaSocialMedia.com” the Social Media Strategist had a nice set up and he really knew his stuff, it was clear to see why he’s the leader in his field.

I cannot forget Claire Molinaro… I just wanted to mention her because she was hot… That’s it enough about that (hahaha) She’s a marketing consultant from Sinclair Communications she almost sold me a ton of radio spots?!?

Before I headed over to the workshops I stopped by Rubin Communications Group and met the Chief Operating Officer Sara Jo Rubin (rubincommunications.com). This is an AWESOME company great people and I am really looking forward to doing business with them in the near future.

Ohhhhh… I almost forgot one of my favorites… I met Alan Jones from NCM Media Networks. He is the guy responsible for the local advertisements you see right before the movie begins at the cinema. I can’t wait to talk to Alan and see if this form of advertising will help me to grow my opt-in list. I need to do a little more research (always looking for new ways to grow my list). Especially since I have a new product coming out that is geared towards filmmakers.

After cruising the isles of business owners and networking a little I eased over to the workshops and listened to Gina M. Watkins (Great Speaker) break down the power of email marketing, and all that it involves.

Next up to bat was Lynn Switanowski who spoke on Social Media Boot Camp she really hit a home run with her workshop. All in all it was a great event and I hope to see more Internet related events in the future.

I would like to say hats off to Retail Alliance (www.retail-alliance.com) for putting on such a great event.

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