Posted by:
Michael Masterson
November 25, 2008
Issue #553
"This may seem simple, but you need to give customers what they want, not what you think they want. And, if you do this, people will keep coming back."
John Ilhan
I believe that for every business, at any given time, there is an optimum strategy for acquiring new customers - and that the primary marketing obligation of the company’s CEO is to make sure that strategy is discovered and implemented.
What do I mean by an optimum strategy for acquiring new customers?
I mean a marketing and sales strategy that will produce the greatest long-term benefit to the company. Usually, that means finding and converting the greatest number of high-lifetime-value customers, i.e., customers who will continue to buy products from the company for years into the future.
Here’s an example …
Since its inception, EarlytoRise.com has recruited almost all its customers through Internet advertising. Of the many conversion strategies we have tested, two have so far proven effective:
- Selling informational reports on other websites and then giving buyers a free subscription to our daily e-zine, which then sells them all sorts of "back-end" products.
- Targeting search engine users on a pay-per-click basis with a free special report, and then giving them a free subscription to the e-zine with its back-end selling.
What we found - over and over again - is that those who had purchased our informational reports were worth considerably more over the long-term than those who had responded to our free report offers.
(more…)
Posted by:
Clayton Makepeace
November 3, 2008
Issue #537
Dear Business-Builder,
A few weeks back, I asked you to tell me what you’d like to see me write about on this blog. The #1 answer was, “Whatever’s on your mind.”
So here goes …
This is not a happy time for any American who still harbors dreams of becoming rich.
Barring a miracle, we are about to make Barack Hussein Obama the next president of the United States. And, to ensure that he is given full reign to have his way with us, we’re about to give him a huge majority in both houses of Congress.
That means, if you believe Senator Obama’s campaign promises …
- He will soon add other people’s names to your paycheck if you earn $250,000 or more per year.
- He will use confiscatory taxes to punish small businesses — America’s #1 source of new job creation — and by doing so, he will send unemployment skyrocketing.
- He will raise taxes on investment; which can only diminish demand for stocks and wipe out trillions more dollars that we’ve invested in our retirement and college savings plans.
- And if he makes good on even half the new spending promises he’s made in his campaign, we’re likely to see a federal deficit approaching $2 trillion in 2009 and skyrocketing interest rates as far as the eye can see.
(more…)
Posted by:
Clayton Makepeace
October 10, 2008
Issue #521
Dear Business-Builder,
On January 21 of this year and again on March 17, I warned you that the economy was about to get extremely tough and urged you to prepare.
I pointed out that trillions of dollars in subprime mortgages granted to unqualified low-income people — and then securitized and sold to major institutions and investors by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and others — had lit the fuse on a keg of dynamite that would blow the economy to smithereens.
Since then, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has plunged about 30% and we’ve seen two of the three largest point declines and the worst week in Dow history. The S&P 500 and NYSE indices have plunged about 32% and 35% respectively.
This morning, CNBC reported that the Wilshire 5000 has lost $8 trillion of its value this year.
I’ve been studying and writing about this crisis since 2006 — long before anybody in Washington or Wall Street was saying a word about it. Nine months ago — when it became clear that this crisis would have a major impact on your career and/or business, I began writing about it in this marketing blog, too.
In the nine, short months since then, many of our oldest and most venerable financial institutions have failed, been seized by Washington or swallowed whole by competitors:
(more…)
Posted by:
Troy White
August 8, 2008
Issue #477
Fellow Business-Builder,
Last Sunday night, while we slept, someone cut through the screen on a kitchen window, crawled through, rifled through a few things, opened one of the vehicles out in front of the house and went through the glove box and console, then stole the keys to the other vehicle (the dreaded minivan) and took off.
I woke up (fast) at 7:45 am when one of my 7-year-old daughters came in the room asking why all the doors in the house were "wide open." I ran out and sure enough the front screen door and main door were pried open.
The back doors the same.
** Something was most definitely wrong.
Then I noticed the kitchen window screen was cut, and the ledge below the window had been cleaned clear of all the photos that used to sit there.
Someone has been in the house - maybe was still there - and we had yet to figure out what was stolen. I see my laptop still sitting there. An iPod and a cell phone both lay on the kitchen counter. Cash still sitting on my tabletop in the bedroom.
Luckily everyone is safe and sound.
In a case like this, anything could have happened.
The person may have gotten startled and done something drastic.
One of the kids could have gone to the bathroom and ran into the thief.
Anything could have happened.
** Fortunately, nothing did.
A missing purse and minivan - who cares?
We are all fine - which is what really matters.
(more…)
Posted by:
Daniel Levis
August 6, 2008
Issue #475
Dear Web Business-Builder,
Despite all the doom and gloom we’re hearing these days about corporate bankruptcies … recession … collapsing currencies … skyrocketing fuel costs and inflation … and the wholesale slashing and burning of thousands of jobs in America today … not everyone is feeling the crunch.
More kitchen-table millionaires are emerging from the carnage than at any other period in history …
For those who understand the true nature of the gut-wrenching change our world is struggling through … there has never been a better time to enter the entrepreneurial fray with both guns blazing.
A whole new, Internet-enabled way of doing business is emerging … while the old-guard, industrial-age way of doing business is cracking at the seams.
You see it happening all around you. And nowhere is it more apparent than at the customer touch points of commerce … where consumers are rebelling against the old guard in ever increasing numbers.
Sales and profits at such companies will be pummeled into oblivion. Many will simply cease to exist as their customers go running to a whole new breed of business that beats to an entirely different drummer.
One of the driving forces behind this consumer revolt is the fact that the world has become astonishingly more competitive.
Rapid advancements in communications and computing technology are making vertical integration unnecessary, thereby toppling barriers to business entry.
The trend is toward smaller, nimbler, horizontally-integrated businesses.
Where in the past, transactional fiction meant a company sought to control as many of the elements of production and distribution as it possibly could … centralizing command … standardizing products … concentrating resources … and gobbling up capital to acquire other companies in an eternal quest for “economies of scale” … these things are in many cases no longer an advantage.
Now a guy in his basement can create a virtual corporation based almost entirely on outsourcing, often with little or no outside funding.
Invariably these small, horizontally-integrated businesses find it much easier to stay focused on what really matters — finding and keeping customers. While the large, vertically-integrated dinosaurs worry about such things as shareholder value, mergers and acquisitions, and frantically struggle to rescue the bottom line.
Is it just me, or have you noticed the flagrant disregard for customers displayed by these old guard companies lately?
(more…)
