Archive for Web Marketing Strategy
Ed’s Magnificent Symphony Of Four Parts
Posted by: | CommentsHaving a massive catch up with regard the 2010 challenge since my focus has been on other things. But I’d like to have a complete record here. If you’re doing The Challenge or are up to date there won’t be much in this post of interest for you. Just saying! :-)
The pre-module ended with:
Day 5 – The Challenge disclaimer, primarily for legal reasons, I should imagine.
Basically, we can’t guarantee you will make money and we will make a commission on some advertisements etc. etc.
Day 6 – The Magnificent Symphony of Four Parts
This is an essential lesson for anyone thinking of starting an internet marketing business (or anyone who already has one), irrespective of The Challenge. In fact the success of any commercial endeavour comes down to these four things and the order is just as critical as the parts themselves.
Typically, when anyone starts a business they start with an idea for a product and go ahead and make it without first discovering if there is a market for the product. This is a high risk strategy and one that isn’t necessary, especially online. Even with good research, you can’t guarantee that you will pick a winner but you can mitigate your risk and not waste you time in markets that are never going to sell if you apply the four parts.
1. Market Research
This phase is commonly rushed through or not done at all, but if you make the effort to do this bit properly you will eliminate much of the risk right here. With all the tools and information available online there’s really no excuse not to do it. You just need to be patient and not rush forward before it’s done. In Ed’s experience, 95% of all the problems that turn up later could have be identified in advance if the market research had been done effectively. So skimp on this step at you peril!
2. Traffic
Even with the best product in the world, if no-one is visiting your offer, you’re not going to sell anything. So you need to determine upfront if there is enough traffic to sustain your business in the market place.
3. Conversion
This refers to how well your page produces the desired action from you visitors. Typically this is buying your product but it could also be other things such as signing up to a mailing list, clicking on an ad, completing a survey etc. Once you have the traffic it’s easy to test different options to improve your conversion rates and income.
4. Product
Once you have visitors they will tell you what they want to buy, or you can find out from market research, so there’s no need to know this in advance. you don’t even have to have your own produce although you will make more if you do.
Taking Stock and Remembering Market Leadership
Posted by: | CommentsMuch of the time, since starting this site, it’s felt like I was fumbling around in a kind of fog. Sometimes I seemed to be clearly following a process, such as when I was looking for an outsourcer or doing the 5cft challenge. But much of the time it’s felt like I was over complicating things by signing up for new courses or products whilst trying to get my Critical Focus Time blocks done.
Yesterday, I completed the 5 Day Traffic Blitz and felt pretty exhausted after sending in my report and after a full on couple of weeks. So I was happy to go to the cafe, with no work to finish, and just do a couple of crossword and soduku puzzles.
Now, it feels like time to stand back, take a couple of days break and plan for the next phase.
~~~~~~
Having dabbled with a few different approaches since March I’ve now reached a point where I feel I can blend them together and I’ve come up with a system which I hope will work for me. I’m much clearer on the way I want to go about things and what I do/don’t enjoy doing.
I have a plan which I want to start on Monday and follow for the next 4 weeks but first I thought it would be useful to take stock of what I’ve discovered so far and where I stand on the various products/approaches I’ve tried out and I’ll be posting about these over the next few days.
~~~~~~
With regard this Internet Marketing Coaching site . . .
. . . I had a 1:1 mentoring session with Ed today and, beforehand, was a bit stumped as to what I would talk to him about. When I checked my stats I was particularly pleased to see that I was now at positions 2 and 4 for my main keywords so was happy that I had something positive to report.
However, Ed wasn’t particularly impressed since this is a Market Leadership site and I was reminded again, that it’s not position that’s important but traffic. It’s easy to forget that. So, most of the mentoring was around the Market Leadership stuff.
Not thinking about Search Engine Optimization on a site is quite difficult for me because I’ve been following the SEO approach for a number of years. I will continue to do that elsewhere in my business of course, just not here.
Given that, I need to be posting more frequently about what’s important to me and worrying less about keywords etc.
To illustrate the point, despite doing well in Google I am still only getting an average of 13 unique visitors a day and, if this wasn’t a Market Leadership type site, I’d be ditching it at this point since the traffic potential from an SEO approach is way too small.
So, one part of my 4 week plan will be to post here, each week day. I’ve done that before on my previous blog and found it to be quite a challenge so I shall be experimenting with the best way to achieve this. Also, I’m not sure how much personal stuff to include without turning people off.
But there’s only one way to find out so here’s another opportunity to fail in the field and not in my head!
If there’s anything you’re curious about or would like me to write about just ask. (Note to self – check if contact form works!)
Since this site, is a Market Leadership one it should be all about expressing my opinions in the market. So ask away . . .
Internet Marketing Overwhelm Is Kicked Into Touch
Posted by: | CommentsI looked at my inbox first thing and felt my energy drop as I was bombarded with the latest Internet Marketers plying their wares. As I’ve been feeling overwhelmed recently, I’ve not been opening these emails so they’re just sitting there, torturing me.
Here are just a few:
- Really cool opportunity (get in now)
- Life Changing (I Promise)
- Ready to TURBOCHARGE your web visitors and profits??
- Webinar That Will Change You (Seriously)
- I’ve got something BIG I WANT TO GIVE YOU
Why do I do this to myself? Why even read them?
I am haunted by a fear of missing something important – of missing the one big thing that’s going to make the difference. It seems to be part of my cells now, an almost instinctive response that makes it hard to let go. And yet, if I only stop to think about it this fear has no validity whatsoever because THERE IS NO ONE BIG THING.
I know from personal experience that there is always another “life changing” opportunity in internet marketing. Not to mention that, all the ones I’ve signed up for, in the past, never actually changed my life. But that’s all part of the internet marketing dream isn’t it? The magical promise that some product is going to be the big thing that changes everything. It’s the same erroneous mentality as winning the lottery. And we all know that the vast majority of the big “winners” can’t hold onto the money or end up miserable. But still we chase the dream.
Well not me. Not any more!
Behaving as though there is something important out there to miss is slowing me down, confusing me and is counter productive to my achieving what I’m really after. I have caused this internet marketing overwhelm so I can get out of it too. Here’s how:
- take a deep breath.
- unsubscribe from all “just in case I miss something” email lists – not just internet marketing but coaching as well.
- unsubscribe from all teaching lists apart from Ed Dale’s.
- cancel all teaching products apart from Ed Dale’s mentoring.
- filter automated emails from my coach Elese Coit and from Michael Neill so they don’t hit my inbox. Read only when I need a bit of a motivational push.
- DO NOT SIGN UP FOR ANYTHING NEW unless it forms an intrinsic part of my CURRENT (as in RIGHT NOW) web marketing strategy.
- take a deep breath.
. . . Done!
Outsourcing Project Setup
Posted by: | Comments
Having made the decision to set up an internet marketing outsourcing project it’s time to plan what steps I need to take in order to make that happen. I’m feeling quite nervous about this as I’ve never taken on a full-time worker before and I have hundreds of questions and concerns going round in my mind. However, applying the dictum of ”Fail in the Field and Not in Your Head” I’m just going to get on with it and take it one step at a time.
1. The first step is to answer the question:
“What work could someone do for me today that would allow me to generate income fastest?”
In my case, the answer is:
- article marketing – consisting of writing, spinning and submitting to article directories
- creating backlinks – by commenting in forums and blogs.
Since my site is new, I am still trying to build up traffic to 100 uniques a day. The above is the web marketing strategy I’m currently using and this is where I’m spending the bulk of my time. They are tasks that are easily outsourced.
Depending where you are in your online business some other answers might be:
- building a website
- creating a product
- video production
- customer service
- accounting etc. etc.
2. Next I need to look at how long it would take them to do those tasks to determine whether or not I have enough work for a full-time worker or whether, perhaps, I could share their time with another internet marketer. If you have an established business you may have more work than can be carried out in a month, in which case you will need to prioritise what will make the most difference to your bottom line, and either get those tasks outsourced first or consider hiring more than one worker.
My task break down looks like this:
| Task | Hrs |
| Write article/edit PLR article | 1 |
| Submit to Ezine Arts | 1/4 |
| Social Bookmark | 1/4 |
| Spin and submit to MAS | 3/4 |
| Spin and submit to AMA | 3/4 |
| Spin and submit to FTS | 3/4 |
| Add to Art Dash and Base | 1/2 |
| Total Time Per Article | 4 1/4 |
| . | . |
| Hand Commenting | 1 |
| Directory Submissions | 1/2 |
| . | . |
The directory submissions are low down on my list of priorities and could be if and when all other tasks are completed. So, as a starting point, if I do one article marketing cycle a week plus hand commenting, I’m going to need a minimum of 7 websites to keep someone busy full-time or 3 to 4 if I do 2 articles per week. I have this, although article marketing wouldn’t necessarily be the best strategy for all of them but at least this gives me a place to start and allows me to get on with the business of finding someone to oursource to and training them to do this first task.
3. I need to decide where I am going to look for a worker.
4. I need to decide what system I will use to manage the work.
5. I need to decide what system I will use to manage communication between myself and a worker.
Since there are a number of possibilities I want to look into, and I’m trying not to go into overwhelm, I’ll cover these points in future posts.
Internet Marketing Outsourcing Tips
Posted by: | CommentsIf you’re considering outsourcing for your business or wondering how you’re ever going to get everything done (think Life in the Grind) then there’s a launch that will be of interest to you. As is often the case these days, there’s a lot of gold to be found in the pre-launch. What I heard last week, has already galvanized me into getting over my resistance and giving outsourcing a try again. But this time, based on the expertise provided by John Reese, I will be doing it differently.
Word of warning though. There’s some great information in the first video, with hopefully more to follow, but you’ll need to put up with the usual sun glasses, shiny car, ocean back-drop etc. – barf, barf. Don’t let that put you off though, if you’re serious about learning to outsource.
John Reece’s prelaunch series is here:
http://www.outsourceforce.com/2-dollar-per-hour-power-formula-sp
And there’s more useful information in an interview of him by Ed Dale where Ed pre-empts some of what is to follow later in the series:
http://www.eddale.co/general/the-dirtiest-of-internet-marketing-secrets-revealed-in-this-video
The main shift in my thinking about outsourcing, as a result of listening to the interview, is to think of hiring someone for a number of hours, rather than on a per project basis. And, according to Reese this can be done for $300 per month, full-time.
My experience of outsourcing has, in the past, been on a project by project basis. A couple of drawbacks with this is that I had to keep training new people when they changed their mind about wanting to work part-time, or they got a “real” job or someone made them a better offer. A good thing about having someone work full-time (and exclusively for you, as recommended by John Reese) is that you can build a long-term relationship with them and reward them for their innovation and loyalty.
Other points that were useful included:
- the more detailed the specification you can give, the better and faster you will get the work done.
- don’t give any one person access to all the parts of your business or to critical financials such as Paypal.
- ask for regular reports (e.g. every 2 days), create milestones and hold them accountable to them.
- look for someone with multiple skills such as designing and content writing
- require them to sign a contract to work exclusively for you
There’s much more good stuff in the interview but these were the most important points for me. I’m looking forward to the next video. But before that . . .
. . . here’s a tip of my own:
If you don’t have a good system in place for the work you’re doing, don’t even think about outsourcing. Instead of having one disorganised and unfocussed person you’ll just end up with two AND be paying for the privilege. A lesson I learnt the hard way.
But, if you’ve read my past posts such as “how to manage boring and repetitive tasks” you’ll know I’ve been practising keeping on keeping on, even when I’ve been bored with what I’ve been doing. And the result of that is that I’ve pretty much set up a system for spinning and publishing articles that maximises my time and the results achieved. So I feel that this is something I could now outsource (along with some of the more straight forward link building).
I notice that I’m not bounding into the sunset, thrilled to be able to do this though. Because I know that getting everything running smoothly and managing a new relationship will be another steep learning curve. However, I recognise that if I want to develop a real business, rather than one I’m just playing around with, I won’t be able to do everything myself. And, even if I could, I wouldn’t want to. So, I’m putting my fear behind me and rising to the challenge.
