Could Celebrities Be Cutting-Edge Marketers – Leading Online Business Entrepreneurs?

“Where is The Future of Online Business –

Could Celebrities be showing mainstream business the way?”

Have Your Competitors ‘Caught On” and already Talking to Your Customers in this latest marketing evolution for Web Success? (And are they doing it Auto-matically and VERY Cheaply!) SO MANY Crucial Questions to answer… please read on.

The following Report is the Cover Story for “Australian Business Solutions” magazine

YOU WILL DISCOVER HOW CELEBRITY MARKETING STYLES ONLINE LEAD ‘AUDIENCES’ TO WANT TO BUY RATHER THAN THE CONVENTIONAL BUSINESS APPROACH OF SELLING AND CLOSING. YOU WILL DISCOVER VALUABE, IN FACT ESSENTIAL INSIGHTS AND IDEAS THAT EVERY MARKETER, ENTREPRENEUR AND BUSINESS OWNER MUST NOW EMBRACE!”

(WARNING: THIS REPORT MAY FRIGHTEN YOU… IT WILL DEFINITELY ENLIGHTEN YOU!)

There is a buzz around on the television news, radio, in the print media, at business networking groups and meetings and especially on the internet right now. There seems to be a shift of focus for how people look for products and services and then decide how they spend their money.

In terms of influence and power, the new way people search for products and services and make their buying decisions online could even rival the search engines. And it’s been said that this buzz could be the single biggest thing to happen in business since the industrial revolution!

Sounds over the top, but is there enough evidence (for you) to be a part of it too? And is this buzz a fad or could it be here to stay?

If you’ve watched TV news or listened to radio or brought a newspaper in the past 2-3 years, you will have noticed references to websites in both stories and advertising, where you can find out more – including how to get more information about a product or service and/or how to buy instructions. In more recent times nearly every news presenter, TV show host, journalist and celebrity are also promoting how you can ‘follow’ their lives, interests and activities online too – and it all seems to be centred around websites such as Facebook.com, Twitter.com, YouTube.com, Digg.com and more, collectively known as Social Engines.

Celebrities are using these sites to raise their profile, build their brand and most importantly, solidify their popularity and [hopefully] longevity in their profession and industry. AND, these sites enable their audience (loyal army of fans) to talk directly back to them. And this is at the heart of the buzz and current shift – and why it’s so very important you read on and learn more.

On the Social Engine Twitter.com, Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres have more followers (fans) than the entire populations of Ireland, Norway and Panama. Their brand awareness and popularity building is personal, although as that increases, so too does their value to corporations looking for product endorsements to drive their market penetration and increase their market share.

Sporting stars like celebrities have broadened their talent base too, becoming more entrepreneurial and business savvy, seeing their name, brand and product value increase, in many cases, to a higher income level than the actual core sporting talent. In other words, acting, playing a sport, being a comedienne or whatever is their core talent is no longer their only talent. They have embraced the concept of brand building (and protection), marketplace communications and conversations – opting for direct contact via sources like online Social Engines. Here they can touch far more people quicker and easier than say a traditional autograph signing exercise.

A true business woman, leader and entrepreneur, celebrity Oprah Winfrey instantly connects and updates a loyal army of over 2 million+ people that follow her on Twitter. Her power and influence is no surprise or revolution in itself, but her army of followers are able to directly provide instant feedback and ideas to her too -and marketplace feedback is a life blood to your business growth and long term sustainability. (Try ignoring it and see where your business goes.) Everyone wants to be heard and Social Engines give you, your business and your customers a voice.

A loyal army of followers can also provide a viral effect to disseminate information quickly too, meaning they can ‘spread the word for you’ if you ask them to – this can be particularly useful if you want to spread good news and conversely if your brand comes under attack via other mainstream media mechanisms or on the Social Engines themself.

Although it might be hard to fathom, could celebrity entrepreneurs like these be showing more traditional businesses how to connect, behave, build our brand, increase our marketplace value and build our business too using these Social Engines?

Is this a valid idea and model for mainstream business or not?

Firstly, the power of Social Engines extends far beyond Twitter.com alone. Some of the other leading Social Engine sites sprout some pretty impressive visitor and member statistics, as well as services.

Facebook.com – If it was a country rather than a website, it would be the world’s 3rd largest after China and India.

On Facebook there are more than 250 million active users and more than 120 million of them log on to Facebook at least once each day and more than 5 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day (worldwide). The fastest growing demographic is 35 years old and older and within that, the fastest growing segment is 55-65 year-old females. Do people 35+ and women influence the buying decision for your products and services? This is worthy of your attention.

And there’s more… more than 1 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared each week on Facebook alone and more than 2.5 million events are created and advertised each month. More than 45 million active user groups exist on the site and more than 50 language translations of that content are available on the site. The people supplying all this content include business owners and professionals, some of whom are surely in your industry and probably your competitors. And if you think because you’re a localised business that this doesn’t count, you’ll find this statistic most enlightening- 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States.

All of those statistics are just for Facebook alone (source Facebook.com/press/statistics).

You can also purchase Pay Per Click and Pay Per Impression advertising on Facebook (and other Social Engines). They take your spend to a whole new level of value and ROI with their member data allowing you to display your adverts for keywords AND additional, specific demographics of the member base. For example you can display your advertising message to women, 55+ in Melbourne who are single. You can even target people specifically on their birthday with a relevant offer.

YouTube.com – take a look at YouTube (which is owned by Google for good reason) – People are watching hundreds of millions of videos a day on YouTube and uploading hundreds of thousands of videos daily. In fact, every minute, ten hours of video is uploaded to YouTube -including promotional videos, education, product consumption/direction videos and client testimonials for business. Plus every video you add to YouTube includes a spot on the webpage where you can put a link back to your website. PLUS you can add these videos to your blog posts, making them more interesting to your blog readers on other Social Engines too (more about blogs in a moment).

YouTube’s user base is broad in age range, 18-55, evenly divided between males and females, and spanning all geographies. Fifty-one percent of users go to YouTube weekly or more often, and 52 percent of 18-34 year-olds share videos often with friends and colleagues.

And could this be the good reason Google brought YouTube? It’s the 2nd largest search engine in the world today, 2nd only to Google.com. If you want to connect with your marketplace on volume, this is worthy of your attention.

Twitter.com – let’s take a statistical look at that quickly too. Twitter’s footprint has expanded impressively in the first half of 2009, reaching 10.7 percent of all active Internet users in June with 83.1% of users over the age of 25. In July 2009, the Twitter website recorded 23,284,395 unique visitors – who else wants to be ‘front-of-mind’ to an audience of that size? Does your target market include people 25+? This is worthy of your attention.

Twitter has been described as the “Pulse of the Planet” given its instant, viral spread-the-word-to-the-world-instantly nature. It has boosted box office numbers and it’s killed them too, just ask the makers of the movie “Bruno” – overnight ticket sales dropped by more than half thanks to the frank and instant feedback from those that had just seen it. It was so quick too because 80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices. People update anywhere, anytime – imagine what that means for bad customer experiences and you!

Do you let your customers walk away with a bad experience, only to stand out the front of your store or hang up the phone and blast their frustration and disappointment to hundreds, thousands maybe millions of people -in the ‘heat of the moment’?

The true power of Social Engines is not to be feared, it is to be embraced and when done well, you can influence large numbers of people in the ways you want them to know and represent you. This is worthy of your attention.

Understanding the nature of Social Engine participation is important and the question to answer is – What are people doing on these Social Engines? They are looking for ideas, insights, invites, offers, information, inspiration and conversation.

Savvy business owners, entrepreneurs and professionals are providing it all to them and at the same time, in a more passive or softer way than conventional advertising, promoting their business, building their reputation and ultimately getting more leads and customers to their web sites. These business owners, entrepreneurs and professionals are using resources within services like Facebook that include a Personal Profile Page, Business and Product Pages, Fan Clubs, Groups, Time-sensitive Events/Promotions, Classified Advertising (PPC) and more… and the really smart ones are sharing content direct from their website blog feed too (more about that in a moment).

Then there are sites like LinkedIn, a professional social network and directory of business owners and professionals who can communicate quickly and easily with one another. In a 2009 survey, 80% of businesses and companies who are members were using LinkedIn as a primary recruitment tool to find new employees. This is worthy of your attention.

On these Social Engines, people can say what they want about you and it’s uncensored. What do you do about it? Ignore it and hope the customers and prospects that really matter to you don’t see it? Should you take a proactive approach and start by monitoring what’s been said about you and then start providing your brand of information, insights, ideas and inspiration to your marketplace and control the information flow you want through them?

We are living in an era now where what happens in Vegas goes ON and STAYS ON YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook and more.

“Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, WORD of mouth has become WORLD of mouth.”

Love them or hate them, social engines are here to stay simply because ‘the people’ love them and trust others on them. Facebook and MySpace are among the most popular destinations on the web. And even though they can be extremely annoying, there is one inescapable fact: the most irritating thing about Facebook is the 200m-strong army of people who use it.

And here’s the final enlightening point- Social Engine participation has overtaken pornography as the #1 activity on the Web.

SO Do you get involved or not? And if so, how do you do it easily and cheaply but still ‘play the game’ like a Celebrity with a 2m+ loyal army of followers?

The reality is that even if you’re not involved, your customers and prospects AND competitors probably are – and they’re talking to one another, perhaps about you and without you so the sooner you start, the better chance you have to becoming both a part of the conversation and then lead it.

The answer for businesses, entrepreneurs and professionals is automation – this is the single biggest break-through strategy and tactic that very few people have worked out, including many larger corporations who are successfully using Social Engines but they are not leveraged with automation, also known as things happening ‘auto-magically‘.

In many cases, businesses are employing specialist online staff on top of web masters and advertising/SEO experts. With automation, you can do a whole lot for very little extra time and virtually no money.

HOW DOES IT ALL WORK?

At its essence or core are six words that will transform the way you generate leads and make repeat sales online – those words are YOUR WEBLOG FEED PLUS SOCIAL ENGINES.

A Weblog or blog as it’s more commonly known is a type of website or part of an existing website that allows you to add content as blog posts or articles and display them on your website – content like information, ideas, insights, offers, news, invites, images and more and you can create blog posts quickly and easily without ever needing to get a webmaster to do it for you.

There are over 200,000,000 Blogs online today and that number grows every day. Again, not all blogs and blog owners are equal, many are neglecting to include automation and leverage and integration with Social Engines so there are many nay-sayers about blogging, but that attitude is changing as more people are enlightened.

A Feed or RSS Feed as it’s more commonly known will distribute your blog posts well beyond just displaying them on your website. Feeds permit subscription to regular updates of your blog posts, delivered ‘auto-magically‘ via a web portal, news reader, or in some cases good old email. Feeds also make it possible for your content (information) to be packaged into “widgets,” “gadgets,” mobile devices, and other technologies as shortened or full length messages, which Social Engines happen to LOVE. Your Feed makes it possible to display blog posts just about anywhere on the web or web connected device and most importantly directly to the millions of people online every day.

That means a Blog with an RSS Feed can ‘auto-magically‘ distribute information you create about you, your business, your products and your services quickly and easily across thousands of sites on the web. And you only have to create your pieces of content once!

A blog is a powerful code (invisible to the human, non-techie eye) and every time you add content to an existing or new blog post, like you would add content to a word document, it is distributed around the web in seconds and is fed directly into the biggest marketplaces and communities of people online every day.

What makes a blog with a feed even more powerful is that it reaches the biggest sources of people (leads) online – who by the way are not just using Search Engines anymore to find out about products and services, they are also using the “Social Engines”. PLUS your Blog Feed can also ‘auto-magically‘ update Google and Yahoo about your site too, so you still stay connected with the Search Engines for no more extra work, or money.

Now if you’re anything like me, when I first heard about these Social Engines, I dismissed them as not being a viable business and marketing channel because they appeared to be for personal networking and friendship (and they are indeed used for those reasons). Whilst many businesses, entrepreneurs and professionals are using these engines and winning new business – only a handful are doing it easily and quickly, because most of them do not know about the power of connecting your Weblog RSS Feed and how it fits in with using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Digg and hundreds more Social Engines.

In my own experience, I was wrong to not get involved with Blogs and Social Engines sooner (like many business owners and professional managers still are) as my competitors began to build an edge I did not have with my marketplace, simply because I did not understand and connect these two key points about connecting your blog directly to Social Engines. If you want to find new customers quickly and easily and build better sales from existing customers:

  1. Your website must be a Blog with a Feed and/or include one as part of your website
  2. Your online marketing mix and strategy must include sharing your blog post information with people on Social Engines like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Digg etc.

And here’s why…

Your competitors have possibly already figured out that social engines are where they can connect with people who include your customers and potential customers because the Social Engines are where your customers and potential customers are going online – and they’re going to these Engines regularly and for long periods of time. And people are making buying decisions based on the conversation they are having and the feedback they are hearing.

Even if you [believe you] have no competition, you’re not connecting with your marketplace as directly and as easily as you can, if you are not using the true power of Social Engines. These online sources or marketplaces attract people 24/7/365, who stay for a while each time. How could you NOT promote you, your business and your products and services there?

Every time you add content to your blog, it is circulated out to many Social Engines, once you set up a FREE account with them… people at these Engines who have an interest in what your business offers then come to your website to find out more.

Here’s an example of how your website Blog, its Feed and these Social Engines work together. (Note this diagram also includes the two largest Search engines -let’s not forget them. Using your Blog and RSS Feed, you can ‘auto-magically’ update them too.)

At the centre of this relationship are your website blog and its RSS Feed. Every time you add content to your blog, the Feed distributes it out to the Social and Search Engines with a link back to your website. People on the Social Engines instantly see a summary of your blog post and a link back to your blog/website. If they are interested in you, they click on the link and follow it back to your website to find out more about you and move forward with you.

“Although we like to feed information to the Search Engines for free listings, the Social Engines outperform them in providing INSTANT, FREE traffic (people) to your website… meaning Social Engines host millions of people live online at any given time who are exposed to your blog post instantly… and not only will they follow your link back to your blog/website if they are interested, they also have the power to make your Feed ‘viral’ – voluntarily passing it on to their friends who in turn pass it on… and so on.

The Social Engines and the people on them help you grow your prospect and customer base quickly, easily and cheaply – you can’t get any cheaper than free!”

The Social Engines are places where people go to and stay at; whereas Search Engines are places people only pass through ‘in search of’ a final site destination. This is the major difference and the significant extra power you’re missing out on if you are not involving your business in the Social Engines. Remember though, the Blog Feed is vital to ensuring your participation is mostly ‘auto-magic’ otherwise participating in them could over run your day, your week and your life!

The Blog Feed allows you to ‘auto-magically‘ update the Social Engines, minimizing the ‘air time’ you personally allocate to this.

So, who’s already taking this seriously and using Social Engines as a powerful, quick, cheap and easy tool and media to generate free leads quickly too?

Firstly, no matter your business, products and services, you’ll find prospects and possibly existing clients already participating in these sites on a regular basis. You are bound to find your competitors there too, it makes good business sense to be present on an Engine where millions of people congregate, converse and seek out people with the products and services they require – someone in your industry is probably joining them and being ‘front-of-mind’ and it should be you.

Everyone that gets it commits to it. These world-wide companies, brands and industry leaders have dedicated resources to connect and cultivate relationships with prospects and clients on the Social Engines with reportable, measurable results:

Motor Vehicle Industry: Chevrolet, Ford, General Motors, Honda

Travel and Tourism Industry: JetBlue, Southwest Airlines, Luxor Las Vegas, Marriott International Hotels and Resorts, Carnival Cruise Lines, Hertz Car Hire

Sporting Teams: Chicago Bulls, Detroit Pistons, Portland Trail Blazers, San Diego Chargers

Entertainment: 92Y, The Travel Channel, ComCast, Marvel Entertainment, Direct TV, Pop Caps, TV Guide

Finance: Wachovia, H&R Block, Intuit

Retail: Best Buy, The Home Depot, American Apparel, Rubbermaid, Whole Foods, Zappos.com

Food and Beverage: Starbucks, Burger King, Dunkin Donuts, Popeye’s Chicken, Tastidlite, Kraft Foods (see Vegemite Case Study below)

Other Global brands: Dell Computers, EMC and Kodak – all benefitting by directly connecting with their target marketplace – whether that’s existing customers and/or potential customers.

Case Study:

Kraft Foods have taken an interesting Corporation-Consumer collaborative approach to product promotion and development using Social Engines. Here’s what they say about their social engine strategy:

For many of our strong brands such as Vegemite – we acknowledged that we are simply (proud) brand custodians and that the brand is owned by ‘the people’. We focused our first two years of social engine participation on simply listening and asking questions.

Two of these questions were:

  1. How do you individually like your Vegemite?
  2. If there ever was to be a Vegemite variation what would this be?

Recently Kraft launched their latest product “Name me” a vegemite plus cream cheese experience. Here’s how they are using Social Engines to develop it.

“This is a work in progress; we spent two years listening and now with the product on shelves the Kraft Communications team is engaging with Vegemite loyalists and cynics alike on the 12 top social engines. They are engaging and getting samples out on and off line- and encouraging debate on the new products. There are a number of Facebook groups sitting in the following camps: pro original, pro new flavour and anti new flavour.”

This is just one way Social Engines are helping businesses already to grow brand, product and corporate awareness. There are many other ways to use it too that can and do lead to direct and immediate sales. No matter the size of your business and marketplace, Social Engines, like the internet at large give you a level playing field with industry leaders like Kraft Foods and the others mentioned here.

Your website with a blog and feed will provide regular content to the Social Engines ‘auto-magically’. You need to support that by also visiting the main Social Engines and engaging people on a weekly basis, as it forms part of your marketing, CRM and all the other pay-offs mentioned previously.

Adding content regularly to your Blog Feed, ‘auto-magically‘ keeps you in touch and front of mind to millions of people around the world, on the Social Engines (and Search Engines) so they can access your business, products and services quickly and easily.

The buzz appears to be more than a fad so for your business it becomes not a question of ‘if’ these Social Engines are going to be a valuable marketing tool for business. Rather, the question now is:

“How quickly will you get your business on the Social Engines

… to Capture Your Competitors Clients too?”

HOW TO GET STARTED

Here’s a checklist to help you get started with your new, exciting and FREE Social Engine Strategy:

1) Get a Blog website with a domain name of your choice OR if you already have a website, get a new sub domain or folder added called blog

2) Open an account with at Google, Feedburner, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Digg, and LinkedIn.

3) Install an RSS Blog Feed and set up a Pinging list on it then add your Blog feed to the Search and Social Engine accounts you created in the step above.

4) Create content-rich education videos that can be added to your YouTube account and your Blog – that is then ‘auto-magically‘ added to your Search and Social Engine accounts.

5) Actively participate in or create new Facebook Groups, Events and Pages.

6) Make promotional videos about you, your business, your products, how you help and support people and upload them to your YouTube Channel then add them to your blog posts.

To really make this all work well for you, you need to know there is a big secret in succeeding with growing your business using Social Engines. You’ve read this far, so here it is: Social Engine success rest largely with you getting to grips with:

  1. Being a ‘face’ of your business and allowing people to connect with your ‘authenticity’ as a person ahead of a product, and
  2. the need to ‘listen’ to your marketplace, innovate with change to meet their ever-changing needs and then share information that will help them, rather than push product.

Millions of dollars are spent monthly with pay per click advertising on these sites and more millions are paid to ‘search engine specialists’ who supposedly help you reach number 1 ranking on keywords relevant to your business. It’s a fierce fight between serious players for top spots on search engines, both free and paid listings. An entire industry is built on it and around it. But you now know how to become a leader in your industry on the most powerful Social (and Search) Engines online today and how to do it Quickly, Cheaply, Easily and Auto-Magically.

In some cases, target market demographics may not be using Social Engines; therefore it would not be worthwhile. Consider these statistics when making your evaluation:

78% of consumers trust peer recommendations. Do you rely on 3rd party endorsements to build buyer confidence? If this is not a necessary part of your marketing and sale process, you may be able to ignore Social Engine Marketing.

Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like David Ogilvy – Listening first, selling second. Would your competitors be prepared to connect and listen to your prospects and customers directly to discover what they want, and then give it to them? If not, then you may be able to ignore Social Engine Marketing… and least for a little while.

The worst part is the first part. When you start, your ‘following’ could be small but that is far better than not monitoring what’s been said about you at all! The only way to change that is to get in the game!

Get started right now, before your competitors do -it’s the future of marketing your business online, because that is where the people you want as your customers are going online. It’s only a matter of time before someone in your industry emerges as the leader on the Social Engines – get you and your business front-of-mind first. Enjoy the experience and I’ll ‘meet and tweet you’ on the Social Engines of the World!

TOP 10 Digital Marketers of 2018

SETH GODIN

Seth Godin is a bestselling author and entrepreneur. He is author of ten books that have been best sellers around the globe, and he is also a prominent speaker. Recently he was chosen as one of 21 Speakers.

Seth was founder and CEO of Yoyodyne, the industry’s leading interactive direct marketing company, which Yahoo! acquired in late 1998. He was called “the Ultimate Entrepreneur for the Information Age” by Business Week.

NEIL PATEL

Neil Patel is the co-founder of KISSmetrics, Crazy Egg, and Hello Bar.He created his first website at the age of 13 and paid a few marketing firms to help him out, but unfortunately they provided no results and took all of his money.

His writing mainly includes topics such as SEO, marketing, and branding. Additionally, you will be surprised to know that Neil Patel has built two multimillion online businesses when he was just 30 years old.

GUY KAWASAKI

Guy Takeo Kawasaki is an American digital marketer specialist and author. Previously, he was an Apple employee who was responsible for marketing their Macintosh computer line in 1984. He brought the word evangelist into vogue in marketing the Macintosh and the concepts related to evangelism marketing and technology evangelism.

Larry Kim

Larry Kim is a well known PPC expert and the founder of WordStream. He is also a writer of four award-winning books and regular contributor to Search Engine Land and Forbes. As a founder of wordstream, he has start up an organization from nothing to a successful software company. He does a huge amount of content marketing and PR stuff. His content has produced a vast figure of press pickups in the recent years.

Joost De Valk

Mr. Joost De Valk is the Founder and CEO of yoast.com and WordPress. He is also SEO, a Blogger and a successful web developer with more than 1.5 million monthly readers on his blog.

In 1994, he launched his first website. Later on, SEO turned to be his profession. For mean time, he started working in digital marketing and gathered information for companies like eBay. Later, he developed the plugin, Yoast SEO, which is considered as the simplest and the best WordPress plugin.

Douglas Kar

Douglas Karr is the CEO of DK New Media and founder of Marketing Technology Blog. Beside all, he is also a famous writer and digital marketers who helped businesses like Mindjet, GoDaddy and many more with his skill in online media, PRs, SEO, blogging and pay-per-click

As digital marketing continued to rise, he conveyed his ideas with experience in marketing technology to help others grow their business.

Qadir AK

With passion in digital marketing, Qadir Ak is best known to his innovative strategies while running th online branding company Ultimez Technology. He has been in IT industry since 10+ years. Mr.Qadir from India walks with trends in technology and applies it to every project his company undertakes. Beside India, he is now expanding his Digital marketing & online branding services across wider market of Dubai, UAE.

Dorie Clark

Dorie Clark is an well known digital marketer, speaker, and a regular writer to TIME,Harvard Business Review and the World Economic Forum blog. She is expert in branding and also writer of many famous books like Reinventing You and many more.

Jitendra Vaswani

Jitendra is a Digital Marketing SEO Consultant from India and the founder of

Digi Exe, a Digital Marketing Agency. He is an Blogger and author of WordPress Plugin-SchemaNinja. With 5 years of experience in digital marketing field, he has a strong knowledge of Internet Marketing terms like Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Blogging, Social Media Optimization (SMO), Mobile, Ecommerce and WordPress.

Lessons for Marketers From Chanakya, an Indian Teacher From the 4th Century BC

[Chanakya] Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make it all yourselves!

[Marketing Perspective – Research] Time is short and is the most critical element. You need not make the mistake and then change your strategy. While sometimes you will make mistake but that should be accidental. You need to do a thorough homework/research prior to developing any plans. Analyse what competition closely – from a marketers perspective. This entails learning from competitor research – Research about their positioning, segmenting, marketing case studies and marketing strategies. Once you have researched, you will know how to develop your marketing/communication plans more efficiently.

[Chanakya] A person should not be too honest. Straight trees are cut first and Honest people are screwed first

[Marketing Perspective – How to represent the message?] There is a way to communicate to your audience – revealing all of the properties/attribute has not helped many brands/companies. Several times, it has to be mended as per the current situation and understanding of the audience. This does in no imply that you need to fake stuff but you need to mend it in the right way.

[Chanakya] Even if a snake is not poisonous, it should pretend to be venomous

[Marketing Perspective – Confidence in your Plans/Strategies/Approach/Presentation] Try to be confident in the market. Unless it is a monopoly, brands/companies face huge competition and is subjected to several challenges to grab a piece of the market share. There are big fishes always trying to discourage you and trying to throw you out from the marketplace, hence you should be confident enough of your plans and strategies. Face the competition with utmost confidence, display it through your marketing/sales/business efforts, to your prospects, customers, investors, employees, analysts and other stakeholders. You know what they don’t know and things spoken with confidence, backed by facts/logic always works out.

[Chanakya] Never share your secrets with anybody. It will destroy you!

[Marketing Perspective – Trade secrets] Perhaps the company deals with information that can make or break the company. Trademarks, copyrights, Intellectual property rights, data protection and security are all directed to this maxim stated by Chanakya.

[Chanakya] As soon as the fear approaches near, attack it and destroy it.

[Marketing Perspective: Change your idea/strategy/campaign] Juggling with a known problem is never a solution. It will cause you to be defeated at one point or the other. When you have identified an issue with a campaign, rectify it immediately or if a campaign does not workout, change your strategy and switch to your other option rather than keeping your ego and still juggling to make it work while wasting time, energy and resources on it. A marketer should remember that it is not a personal defeat if the campaign/idea does not work, rather it is for the benefit of the business that he is working for and hence should make possible efforts to attain the stated marketing and business objectives.

[Chanakya] Even from poison extract nectar, wash and take back gold if it has fallen in filth, receive highest knowledge from a low born person.

[Marketing Perspective – Innovation/Learning/Incorporating ideas] Unexplored market segments – take ideas from each one – a small idea/innovation can make a huge difference – receive feedback from your stakeholders – open communication

[Chanakya] Before you start some work, always ask yourself three questions – Why am I doing It, What the results might be and Will I be successful. Only when you think deeply and find satisfactory answers to these questions, go ahead.

[Marketing Perspective] It is indeed true that planning is an important ingredient to the success of any campaign. A well thought and researched, clear objective based campaign has performed well in several cases.

[Chanakya] The world’s biggest power is youth and the beauty of a woman.

[Marketing Perspective – The right segments] These are the two segments that are really powerful. Brands/products/services launched in this category and that have been marketed well, have performed extremely well. Catching the pulse of these two target segments and doing targeted marketing will yield results.

Strategic Action Plan – How to Put Yourself in the Top 5% of Marketers on the Internet

Let’s spend a few minutes focusing on perhaps the most important principle in creating a successful online business- your strategic marketing plan.  A lot of people are intimidated by internet marketing because there is so much competition in many large niches such as network marketing, coaching, consulting, and information marketing.  As an online marketing coach, I can’t tell you how many times I have heard statements like:

  • I just don’t feel like there’s any room for me.
  • Who would want to hear what I have to say?
  • I can think big, but I have no idea how to take appropriate action
  • I have a website, but only have 20 people on my list
  • I have a website; isn’t that enough?

What I am about to share with you will give you an incredible competitive advantage and will serve as the ultimate answer to every single one of these statements, so that you never feel lost in the online world again.

Yes, the internet is absolutely packed with business owners competing for valuable online real estate.  Many industries are indeed saturated with websites and blogs trying to compete for their fair share of traffic, leads, and customers.

But here is the thing you really need to understand:  Less than 5% of the entrepreneurs marketing online have a strategic marketing plan that they consistently take action on.

As internet and network marketing guru David Wood says, ‘The internet is full of people with huge dreams and little work ethic.’

Because this is true, you really have very little competition, besides the one taking place within yourself.  Your only true competition is the excuse you may be making to yourself as to why you can’t/won’t consistently take action to generate massive online exposure.  That, my friend, is what you want to expose first.  Don’t worry about your external competition in the online marketplace.  The only real issue is how willing you truly are to keep taking action until you get the results you desire.

This is why your mindset is such a critical factor that underlies your marketing plan.  Sure, you can map out a marketing strategy that looks good in theory.  But the flat out truth is very few entrepreneurs stick with their action plan.  Why is this so, especially when marketing is by far the #1 activity that leads to more money in their pockets?  Here are the big 3 that I have seen:

  • lack of immediate results– I can relate to this one, as many online marketers can.  We all want to see immediate payoff for our efforts.   In my experience, one of the highest virtues of successful entrepreneurship is the ability to keep putting in the effort without seeing the immediate return on our time and energy investment.  Call this faith, emotional maturity, or discipline-the point is that many of us weren’t taught this virtue and instead, we seek immediate gratification.  This is a killer when it comes to online marketing, as it typically does take time to see tangible results.
  • impulsive and reactive tendencies– This is often a result of not seeing immediate results.   One of the hardest things in internet marketing is that you have a lot of incredibly savvy marketers out there basically preying on your hunger for results.  They lure you to their offers and solutions, which keeps you constantly grasping for the latest and greatest product or program that will quell your frustration and feed your hope.  What ultimately results is a lack of any real consistency or rhythm, making it impossible to build any momentum in your marketing efforts.  You keep jumping from marketing strategy to new program to new idea to new guru.  This becomes a sort of addiction for many people trying to make money online-and there are many smart marketers absolutely capitalizing on this weakness.
  • lack of inspiration/laziness/disconnection from real purpose in life-– This one can take a lot of different forms, but the essence is that you lack the real drive and desire to take effective action because you aren’t clear on what you really want out of your marketing, your business, and often your life in general.  Many people turn to the internet because (I hate to say it) they have no idea what else to do with their lives.

Before you create a strategic marketing plan, you want to honestly assess if you have a tendency to be vulnerable to any of these 3 obstacles (99% of us do).  Seeing your obstacles clearly is always the first step to becoming an empowered and successful entrepreneur.  When you see your blocks as they are without judging them, a door is opened where you see that you have a choice to change anything that is holding you back.

Once you have done some of this inner work, then you will likely be able to create an external action plan that is accessible, effective, and even fun to implement.

When it comes to online marketing, what you want to do is create a marketing process that you can literally commit to just about every single day, especially in the initial phases (the first few months) of launching your product, service, or company.

Your marketing plan is determined by 3 factors:

  1. Your budget
  2. Your knowledge and skill set
  3. Your motivation

If you have a good marketing budget, then you’ll want to spend some money on online advertising, as this is the fastest way to start generating leads for your business.  Google AdWords is really the best way to start.  Depending on your business, you can also invest in classified and ezine ads, or in banner ads on other websites.  Google AdWords is a big learning process, so be sure to get the right training before you go and spend thousands of dollars (this will often turn out to be a generous donation to Google).  I recommend getting Perry Marshall’s Definitive Guide to Google AdWords as a starting point.

If you’re on a tight budget or you don’t want to learn AdWords, you’ll want to do some free marketing strategies.  Let me share with you my daily marketing process.  This should really help you see how this is done.  Keep in mind that I am very strong in factors 2 and 3 above-I have a lot of knowledge in online marketing because I have been doing it for a few years and I have a high level of motivation.  If your knowledge and/or motivation isn’t quite that high, you’ll want to just take a fraction of what my process and implement it consistently.  Bite off only as much as you can chew and be honest with yourself.

Here is my daily marketing strategy:

1.  Write a blog post (you’re reading today’s efforts)

2.  Make a video of that blog post and distribute it through a video distribution software that sends it to all of the video sharing and podcasting sites – this is an incredible online marketing tool that any serious online marketers should be using.

3.  Distribute the post to 27 social bookmarking sites.

4.  Distribute the post to 250 article directories using an article submission software.

5.  Post my blog content on ping.fm so it goes to Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc.

6.  If I’m really wanting to compete for a specific keyword (like for instance if I really want to get ranked for the keyword I am targeting in this post, strategic marketing plan), I will create a squidoo lens and/or a hub page.

7.  If I am so inclined, I will send an email blast to my list to let them know about the post.

I do this as often as possible because it is seriously an incredibly effective FREE way to get my content all over the internet.  Of course, this strategy is premised upon offering real value to the online community, not crap or spam.  I only send out content like I’m sharing with you here.  You only want to distribute your best stuff; don’t be like so many lame marketers and just promote your business and spam people.  Give people stuff that really makes an impact and you’ll see a big difference in your online marketing results.  

The essence of a strategic marketing plan is that it is implemented consistently over the long-term. Your goal should be to be just as methodical, inspired, passionate, and consistent about your marketing one year from now as you are in the start-up phase where it’s easy to get fired up.  It’s just like trying to lose weight and get in shape.  The first week you’re hitting the gym every day and you’re totally on fire about your commitment.  Then, for whatever reason, your enthusiasm starts to wane and other priorities take over.  Eventually, you forget all about that commitment and your mind has taken you to a new focus entirely.

In order to succeed in online marketing, you have to have that vision for what you want firmly in mind all the time and never let go.  Do you really want freedom, passive income, a huge downline, or thousands of people on your list?  Then you need to tap into the virtue of entrepreneurial tenacity.  You keep your eyes on that prize and you let nothing distract you, especially your own mind (this is the biggest danger-that you’ll convince yourself that it’s not possible or that you value something else even more).

When you implement your marketing plan consistently over the long-term, there is no competition because very few business owners actually do this. I know it doesn’t sound all romantic and hype-based like so many of the promises you hear online, but I will tell you this:  If you just stay consistent… if you remain tenacious… if you keep a clear focus on what you really want… and you take action on that every day at least a little bit… you can have it.

Online marketing can take you to that place of incredible freedom and success.  Just be willing to do what so few others are:  Let go of the hype, let go of the need for immediate gratification, and treat this as if it’s your child- daily nourishment and care.  Keep feeding your business through strategic marketing and you will-sooner or later-realize your financial goals and have a lifestyle that most can only dream of.

Should You Let Affiliate Marketers Sell Your Products?

If you have created great products that you are looking to sell online, you may have thought about using affiliate marketers to sell your products. Using this marketing method certainly has its appeal. You don’t have to write tomes of content to market your products. You don’t have to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on pay per click marketing. You don’t have to figure out how to drive traffic to your sales pages.

Before you commit to making your products available through affiliate marketers, though, there are a few things that you should think about. This article will help you determine if selling your products through affiliate marketers is right for you and your business.

First, you should realize that you will be giving up a significant portion of your profits to the affiliate marketers that are driving traffic to your sales pages. The percentage of revenues that you will need to pay to affiliate marketers differs depending upon the types of products you are selling, and the caliber of affiliate marketers you want to attract.

If you are selling tangible products, such as books, cookware, yoga mats, or ceremonial swords, you will usually need to pay a commission of 10 to 20% of sales to your affiliates. These commissions can represent a significant portion of your total revenues, especially when you consider that you still have to pay for manufacturing, shipping, and product returns.

If you are selling electronic products, such as software, ebooks, or website subscriptions, you won’t have to worry about paying for manufacturing or shipping, because there are virtually no shipping costs, and no production costs beyond the initial development of the products.

However, affiliate marketers are accustomed to receiving commissions of 40%, 50%, or even 75% for promoting and selling these products. So if you are selling a $40 ebook, you may only realize a profit of $10 after your affiliate commissions have been paid, not counting the minimal costs associated with maintaining your sales website.

Second, you should think about how widely you want to spread your advertising. Once you make your product available to affiliate marketers, you have very limited control over where and how your products are marketed. Some larger companies have means of checking up on affiliate marketers to find out how there products are being marketed, but even the most sophisticated methods are only moderately effective.

If you have a high end product that creates a sense of luxury for your buyers, affiliate marketing may not be the best way of promoting your products. You don’t want your product to be advertised on just any website – certainly, there are certain types of websites that would not cast your products in a favorable light. Even on the internet, you have to maintain your business’s image, and this is more easily done if you keep your advertising in house.

On the other hand, if you have inexpensive products that you would like to make readily available to a wide base of internet consumers, affiliate marketing can work quite well for generating a high volume of sales.

Third, you should evaluate how much time and money you want to spend tracking affiliate sales and writing out commission checks. If you only plan on accepting a handful of affiliate marketers to promote your products, this may not be a big deal. A simple software program can help you keep affiliate IDs straight, so you can determine which affiliate marketer should be credited for each sale. If you plan on using hundreds of affiliates to sell your products, though, this can quickly become a very burdensome task.

If you do want to accept a high number of affiliate marketers, you might want to use a site such as Clickbank to handle tracking and payment functions for you. Clickbank charges you a flat free per product, but in the long run, it can be well worth this fee to have someone else handling these tasks.

Finally, you should consider how much time you have to spend evaluating and accepting affiliate marketers to promote your products. Essentially, you have two options when recruiting affiliate marketers. You can either accept every affiliate marketer that applies for your program, or you can conduct a thorough review of every applicant to make sure that they are a good fit for your program.

If you accept every marketer that applies for your program, you won’t have to spend much (if any) time reviewing your affiliate marketers’ websites and selling history. However, you will likely find that only 2 or 3 percent of the people who apply to your program have the motivation and skills necessary to effectively market your products. Most people that apply for your program will never get around to setting up dedicated websites, writing pay per click ads, or crafting the content necessary to generate interest for your products and drive traffic to your sales pages.

If you conduct a thorough review of every applicant, you will spend significantly more time on your affiliate marketing efforts, but you will likely find more qualified marketers to sell your products. This is especially true if you make this known to potential internet marketers up front. If you ask affiliate marketers for website addresses, verifiable sales figures, and professional references on your affiliate application page, you will immediately weed out those people who are not really serious about marketing your products. Of course, you’ll want to make sure you have the time to review websites and verify sales numbers, or you will quickly generate a backlog of work while your own sales figures suffer.

So before you start signing up affiliate marketers to promote your products, take the time to evaluate whether an affiliate model is truly right for you and your business.

B2B Marketers Get Customers to Tune in and Connect Through Online Social Networking

A recent survey of online marketers conducted by research firm Forrester and marketing resource MarketingProfs found that in a recession, the first marketing channel in which online marketers said that they would increase investment would be social networking. The beauty of using social networking sites for marketing is that it is cost-effective and if done well, can establish and strengthen your company brand and generate the sales you desire. 

 

Connection and engagement are the heart and soul of online social networking. Two ways to successfully achieve connection and engagement are through video sites like YouTube and through Open Identity Programs like Google Friend Connect, MySpaceID and Facebook Connect.

 

When business-to-business (B2B) buyers are looking for resources to help guide their purchases, chances are good that they are visiting sites like YouTube. Home to an increasing amount of B2B content, YouTube welcomes marketers trying to reach these potential customers.

 

According to eMarketer, which conducts market research and trend analysis on Internet, e-business, online marketing, media and emerging technologies, more than one-half of the U.S. population now watches online video, and eMarketer predicts there will be 190 million online video viewers in the US in 2012.

 

At that point nearly nine out of 10 Internet users will be watching online video!

 

Why all this growth? Videos capture users’ attention and make your message stick. In fact, research firm MarketingSherpa reported over 98% of business technology decision makers found viral videos more memorable than other forms of marketing.

 

If you aren’t utilizing YouTube for online marketing yet, a good place to start is with a YouTube channel. You can customize your channel so that visitors can access your videos, post comments, and engage with your brand and company. Recorded webinars, product demonstrations, video case studies, industry events and advertisements are just some of the ways you can use videos to engage potential customers.

 

Another way to engage and connect is through Open Identity Programs like Google Friend Connect, MySpaceID and Facebook Connect. For marketers, these Open Identity Programs are a significant advancement in social advertising because of the cumulative power of pushing information out through connected sites.

 

For example, Facebook Connect is a new application of the Facebook Platform that allows users to integrate their Facebook data into their own site. Users can connect their Facebook profile with any partner Web site, including Amiando, CBS.com, CitySearch, CNET, CollegeHumor, Disney-ABC, Evite, Flock, Hulu, Kongregate, Loopt, Plaxo, Radar, Red Bull, Seesmic, Socialthing!, StumbleUpon, The Insider, Twitter, Uber, Vimeo and Xobni. By applying a small piece of code, Facebook Connect enables seamless integration with the Facebook platform.  A visitor logs in to a “connected” blog with their Facebook ID, which enables their profile to appear on the blog and link commenting back into their Facebook activity feed.

 

This gives your Web site a new level of dynamic social context because you are able to link your Facebook friends and publish information back into the News Feeds on Facebook.

 

In today’s business environment, it is important to take advantage of every opportunity to not only get in front of your potential customers, but to connect and engage them. Marketing through social networking sites are an excellent way to accomplish this.

Study Finds Strong Majority of Content Marketers Use Social Media Sharing

A research study conducted by Unisphere Research, a division of Information Today, and sponsored by Skyword titled “Content Marketing Gets Social: 2013 Survey on Content Marketing Trends” found that a strong majority of content marketers are using social media outlets to share their information.

The report states that nearly three-quarters (71 percent) of content marketers publish their content to their websites and then promote it on their social networks. Surprisingly, close to one-quarter (21 percent) did not utilize the powerful tool of social media; while a mere eight percent were unsure.

What social media outlets are being utilized? Well, it’s the usual networks that dominate the headlines: Facebook (84 percent), Twitter (79 percent) and LinkedIn (64 percent). In addition, the largest amount of reader activity came from those social media venues: Facebook pegged 55 percent, Twitter posted 45 percent and LinkedIn had 39 percent.

A large majority of content marketers say their primary objectives are to engage both clients and prospects, enhance brand awareness and acquire leads – improving search rankings and increasing web traffic were the least likely goals.

However, these are not their biggest hurdles. Exactly two-thirds say the biggest challenge is creating content that is relevant and targeted to various Internet audiences. Incidentally, content marketers are producing their own content as 87 percent said they write their own.

Is the practice working? It’s still unknown as only 46 percent of respondents said yes and 37 percent noted that the content is currently under development or being planned. Meanwhile, 15 percent gave a definitive no and two percent didn’t know.
“There is a high expectation regarding social media but a very low understanding around measures to determine ROI versus activity,” said one survey participant, while a separate participant noted: “We don’t do as good a job at tracking the value of our efforts as we should be.”

The online study was conducted in August with 217 respondents from the reader base of Information Today’s CRM and EContent magazines.

Indeed, the business of social media marketing is astronomical. The Business Insider published an in-depth report recently that analyzed just how immense the industry is. For instance, to an outsider, it might appear that brands are wasting their money on advertising on social media websites considering how crowded it is. However, since Americans spend an estimated 12 to 20 hours per month on social media – most likely higher – companies can gauge a higher audience for their content.

Looking ahead, social media advertising, though in its infancy period, is forecasted to be an $11 billion industry as brands either allocate or increase their marketing budgets to include this form of advertising. Also, this could be a lot higher because of mobile device usage; half of Facebook and Twitter’s traffic already comes from smartphones and tablets.

It has been suggested by industry insiders that the primary trends to observe for the remainder of this year and into next year are increased budgets, gamification, community content, brand new corporate roles (I.E. social business manager, content strategist) and staff blogging.

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