Posted by:
Gary Bencivenga
October 28, 2008
Issue #533
Dear Marketing Top Gun:
If you want the easiest, surest and most rewarding way I’ve found to succeed online, here is the simple 7-step formula:
- Carve out a niche. Be known for something specific. Use the rifle, not the shotgun. When in doubt, go narrower than others in your field. For specific examples, see The Fuzzy Dice Secret for Exploding Your Sales.
- Give something valuable away free. Within your narrow specialty, create an e-zine (or course, collection of tips, series of mistakes to avoid, seasonal recipes, any regular communication) that demonstrates your expertise and is so helpful, interesting and informative, your prospects will want to keep getting it regularly.
- Promote your free e-zine every way you can — in Google ads, articles you write for the media, speeches before trade groups, press releases, radio interviews, communications with your customers, take-ones at related retail outlets, space ads, newspaper classifieds, direct mail, co-ops and swaps with others in your industry, etc. Explore any and all avenues.
- Capture e-mail addresses. Never give away your valuable free tips on your website! Share them only in exchange for an e-mail address when someone signs up for your e-zine. Consider offering one of your best free tips in the form of a free report to induce people to sign up. This automatically gives you permission — and the means — to stay in touch with your market, building your most valuable direct marketing asset, your list.
- Pile on the value. Work hard to make your free e-zine so valuable and interesting, your prospects eagerly open it. As in romance, woo your new prospects with your bouquets of insight and pearls of wisdom. Don’t be shy about opening up and getting personal. Become a friend. Resist the urge to keep lunging at them with sales lust. Your goal: get your prospects into the habit of welcoming your e-mails like love letters because they are so valuable, useful and interesting … not in the habit of deleting them on sight because they are self-serving sales pitches. The rule: establish trust before you sell with lust.
- Never sell hard in your e-zine or free course. Instead, dance the two-step. The biggest mistake even savvy marketers make in their e-zines is selling too much, too soon, too hard, and too often. Let your e-zine be an oasis of value in a desert of hype. Always, and especially in your first several communications, let the value of your free information far outweigh your sales copy.
Eventually, after you’ve proven your value to readers and it’s time to sell something, dance the two-step …
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Posted by:
Daniel Levis
October 15, 2008
Issue #524
Dear Web Business-Builder,
When it comes to marketing strategy blunders, pretty much everybody remembers the nosedive failure of New Coke, right?
But what most people don’t know is the fascinating story behind the story, and the valuable lesson it reveals …
Coca-Cola was invented by Dr. John Pemberton, an Atlanta pharmacist, on May 8, 1886.
Pemberton brewed the mixture in his backyard in a three-legged brass kettle. The original ingredients were lime, cinnamon, coca leaves, and the seeds of a Brazilian shrub.
The concoction was originally intended as a nerve and brain tonic. People seemed to get a buzz off it, and it quickly became popular. Coca-Cola was soon served at pharmacy soda fountains far and wide.
The company thrived, dominating the cola market with virtually zero serious competition for decades while its nearest competitor, Pepsi, repeatedly flirted with bankruptcy.
In the thirties, Coke had a chance to buy Pepsi’s assets at a ridiculous fire sale price. Management sneered. Pepsi survived, and by the mid-forties began to prosper.
So much so, that by the early eighties, Coke was about to lose a marketing trump card to Pepsi.
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Posted by:
Bob Bly
October 7, 2008
Issue #518
The other day, one of my online subscribers, CR, complained about a famous Internet marketer. "I unsubscribed from his list," she told me haughtily. "As soon as I joined, I got e-mails from him once or twice every day - and there’s no one I (or anybody else) need to hear from that much."
This begs the question: How frequently can you e-mail your online subscribers?
Or, said another way: How much e-mail is too much?
People have lots of opinions about this issue, which they support with arguments that are both passionate and logical.
The problem is: Their opinions are wholly subjective.
The fact is: There’s an easy way to objectively and accurately determine the optimal e-mail frequency for your online subscribers.
How does it work?
Well, every time you send another e-mail blast to your list, a small portion of your subscribers will opt out.
Why?
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Posted by:
Daniel Levis
October 1, 2008
Issue #514
Dear Web Business-Builder,
Have you noticed just how jaded and biased you’ve become toward what shows up in your e-mail in-box these days?
Before you even open an e-mail, you’ve already formed an opinion about the sender … the value of the message … and the motive behind it.
And assuming you do open that message and read it, you don’t read it with an open mind, but simply to confirm your suspicions.
I’ve caught myself doing this dozens of times and been completely oblivious to doing so hundreds more.
We generalize, slotting things arbitrarily in what I call “buckets of the mind,” relating them to anchors that have been set by past experience. In essence, we see what we expect to see.
The “from line” sets our expectation. And that expectation colors everything we read from that point forward. We mentally label the sender, and that label actually clouds our critical discrimination and judgment.
And once we imprint that label, it tends to stick. The first impression your prospects form about you as a seller acts as a filter through which everything you do from that point forward must flow. At best it gives you a halo, at worst, horns.
What’s really interesting about all this is that your market’s perception of you is forcefully impacted by what happens just before you make that initial impression. In fact, each experience we have as human beings tends to prime us for the next.
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Posted by:
Derek Gehl
September 23, 2008
Issue #509
Dear Business-Builder,
Today, I’d like to "bust" an affiliate marketing myth that’s been making the rounds since … well, since affiliate marketing started.
It goes something like this …
To be successful as an affiliate, just join any affiliate program, slap their banner ads onto a basic Web page - and presto, you’ve got an instant Web business that will make you money hand over fist!
For the record, yes, you can make a lot of money by marketing other peoples’ products on the Internet … but no, affiliate marketing is not a shortcut to instant wealth.
As with any other online business, building a successful affiliate site still requires research, planning, and - here’s that four-letter word I keep insisting on using - work.
It’s like building a house. The more solid the foundation is, the more stable the entire structure will be. So if you’re thinking of starting your own Internet business promoting affiliate products, here are four strategies you must follow to guarantee you’ll earn the maximum amount of commissions …
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