Watch This Video. Save Hours a Week.

This video picks up on our recent blog posts about Google Alerts and Google Reader and connects the two together. If you need to keep track of a lot of information online the techniques shared in this video will blow your mind and save you countless hours a week!

Can You Read 100 Blogs in Less Than an Hour?

Imagine if the Post Office didn’t exist. How would you get your mail?

You’d have to be in regular contact with all the people, businesses and organizations that you like getting mail from. And when they have something for you, you’d then have go to them to get it (yeah, I’d skip the places that just have bills and junk mail too!).

Sounds like a very inefficient, time-consuming, and ridiculous system for getting your mail. Right?

But this is exactly the way that most people keep track of their favorite blogs and websites. As a result, they waste loads of precious time constantly checking for new posts, news, articles, videos and more.

There’s a better way. It’s called the RSS feed.

RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication. It’s basically a tool that lets you subscribe to your favorite feeds (ie. blogs, websites, etc.) and automatically get any new content they publish sent directly to you. It’s kind of like your own online Post Office delivery system (with the welcome exception that you have total control over who you receive information from – no bills, no junk mail, no letters from “long lost” relatives when you win the lottery).

To manage your feeds, you’ll need an RSS reader. The most popular one is Google Reader. As with most of Google’s tools, Reader is free and easy to use. You can find it at www.google.com/reader

We’ve been discussing the importance of research to your online marketing endeavors. A big part of that is staying current on the latest trends and news in your industry. Google Reader is yet another great research tool and a great time saver which allows you to that in a very efficient way.

In the next post, I’ll share a video that will show you a how to combine the power of Google Alerts (which we talked about in our last post) and Google Reader. Plus, the video will also share a little known trick that could potentially save you an hour or more a day even if you’re already using Google Reader!

Stay Alert

Imagine having a personal army of researchers for your business.

24 hours a day, 7 days a week, this army is out there looking for information that’s important for you to know. They’re looking at news items related to your industry, blog posts, changes to competitors’ websites, and more.

When they find something they think you should know about, you’re immediately notified.

You’d be pretty smart if you had this, huh? In fact, you’d probably know more about what’s going on in your industry then virtually anyone else out there.

This would help you spot trends, opportunities, and other actionable information before most people and you’d quickly establish yourself as the go to authority in your niche. Think that would be good for your business? You bet!

As it turns out, you can do all this and you don’t even need to hire your own army of researchers.

If you haven’t met already, let me introduce you to Google Alerts.

Google Alerts is a free service that allows you to easily keep track of information online that’s important to you and your business.

To use it, go to http://www.google.com/alerts. There you can enter any search term you want to keep track of. Then select the type of information sources you want Google to monitor for mentions of your search term (ie. blogs, news, video). Next, select how often you want to be notified when information about your search term is found. Last, enter your email address. Repeat for additional search terms.

Congratulations! You now have your own army of researchers scouring the deep corners of the web for information related to your business.

What should you set up alerts for?

Now that you know how to set up Google Alerts, let’s move on to what type of search terms you should get alerts for. Here’s a list of 7 to get you started:

1. Important industry/niche terms
2. Industry buzzwords
3. Your company name
4. Your name
5. Your product name (if applicable)
6. Your biggest/most important competitors
7. Your biggest/most important clients

Why keep track of all this?

Keeping track of these things offers a number of benefits.

You’ll know what people are saying about you, your company, and your products which is critical to monitoring your online reputation (for a good example of how this can work, go here).

You’ll be able to stay on top of what your competitors are up to.

You’ll know about media coverage in your industry which can help you get some PR (be sure to develop relationships with reporters who write about your industry/niche).

You’ll be able to join in the conversation on industry blogs which is a great way to drive traffic to your website.

Google Alerts is one of my favorite online research tools. To keep up with all the information that Google Alerts sends me for free would be at least one person’s full time job. And they probably wouldn’t be able to find it all.

With Google Alerts, it takes me just minutes a day to sort through the Alerts I receive to find the information that’s critical to my business.

If you aren’t using it already, I’d strongly recommend you start staying alert with Google Alerts.

21 Things to Research for Your Online Business

As discussed in the last post, successful online marketing starts and ends with research. All other things being equal, the marketer that does the best job at research wins.

So what sorts of questions should you being looking to answer with your research? Here’s a list of 21 to start with . . .

1. Where do your prospects “hang out” online?
2. What other products/services do your prospects buy?
3. What conversations do your prospects have going on in their heads when they’re looking for your product/service (or related ones)?
4. What specific problems do prospects want your product/service to help them solve?
5. What are the exact words they use to describe these problems?
6. What is the level of sophistication of the market (ie. is it a fairly new market that hasn’t been marketed to a lot or a mature one where the prospects have seen and heard it all from advertisers)?
7. What is the level of awareness of the market (ie. is your product/service relatively new and unique or is it widely known)?
8. What similar products/services are being offered by your competition?
9. How is your product/service the same as the competition’s?
10. More importantly, how is your product/service different from the competition’s?
11. Where is your competition advertising?
12. What are the specific offers your competition is making?
13. Who are potential joint venture or affiliates you could partner with?
14. What are the latest industry trends?
15. What are the latest national/global trends that could be influencing your prospects and customers?
16. What are the most widely read blogs in your market?
17. What are the most widely used message boards in your market?
18. What are the most widely used social networking sites/groups in your market?
19. What potentially underserved niches exist in your market?
20. What are the most common benefits mentioned in ads targeted to your prospects?
21. What keywords would prospects be typing in to find your product/service (or a related one)?

Successful Online Marketing Starts and Ends Here

I thought something had died in my front yard.

The smell was just horrendous. When I saw what appeared to be the source of the smell, I was even more disturbed.

Growing out of the mulch was a phallic shaped whitish reddish almost mushroom looking thing. Upon closer inspection (at least as close as I wanted to get!) I noticed there were a few of these alien like growths protruding out of the ground and there was no doubt they were the culprits producing that nose hair singing smell.

I didn’t know what to make of these things so I did what pretty much everyone does these days when they need information . . . I went straight to Google.

Not knowing what they were, I typed in the following search query – “stinky whitish reddish phallic looking things in mulch” and within a few seconds I had identified my problem – the aptly named Stinkhorns. Within a few minutes I knew more about Stinkhorns than 95% of people worldwide. I was a virtual Stinkhorn expert (not that that’s something to brag about).

What does this have to do with online marketing? It’s this . . .

The Internet is the greatest research tool that has ever been available in the history of the world.

That’s a good thing for Internet marketers because few, if any, things are more critical to successful marketing campaigns than research.

And research is the next topic in our Fundamentals of Marketing Online series. We’re going to look at what to research, how to research, and specific tools you can use to conduct your research.

Now I know what you’re thinking.

Research isn’t fun. It’s boring. It’s tedious.

But that common mindset presents a golden opportunity for you. Because once you understand the importance of research, once you understand how to do it effectively, and once you regularly incorporate research into your online marketing activities, you can easily out-market and out-sell all the competitors in your niche who are too lazy to take this critical step.

And I can’t think of anything more fun or exciting than that!

The Cornerstone of Your Online Marketing Efforts

It’s said the most important factor in real estate is location, location, location.

When it comes to online marketing, it’s content, content, content.

Providing quality content . . .

on your website
on your blog
in your autoresponder series
in your free reports
in your whitepapers
in your YouTube videos
on your Facebook page
and anywhere else prospects can find you

. . . is the cornerstone of your online marketing efforts.

To drive traffic to your site and have a reasonable chance to convert some of those people into customers, you have to prove your worth. Online, the best way to do this is by providing lots of high quality content that will be of great value to your prospects.

And remember, make it all about them.

Provide content that focuses on helping them. Show you can relate to them and you understand the issues they’re facing that you can help them solve. Show them that you are a trustworthy source of quality information that can help them improve their lives in some way.

Do this on a regular basis and you have the foundation of a very successful online money making machine.

Your Online Business’ Most Valuable Asset

The List.

More specifically, the email list you keep of your prospects and customers is your online business’ most valuable asset. These email addresses are from people who have expressed an interest in what you do or, even better, have already given you money for doing it.

Why is the List so important?

Because it allows you to keep in touch with these VIPs on a regular basis.

This is how you keep yourself on people’s minds.
This is how you build relationships.
This is how you earn their trust.
This is how you make it easier for them to buy from you.

Another reason the list is so powerful is that email will likely be the most effective tool you have to drive traffic to your site and sales to your business. This is because email is very personal form of communication and the traffic you drive from email will generally be much more targeted and productive than traffic from other sources.

Be sure to pay special attention to your customer email list. Many marketers ignore customers, past and present, when marketing. This is a huge mistake. It is FAR easier (and cheaper) to get money from people who have already shown a willingness to do so than going out and try to convince new prospects to spend their money with you.

So how do you build your list?

Simple – use bribes. No, not an unethical kind of bribe. Use a bribe like a newsletter, whitepaper, special report, or some other piece of useful content.

Have a sign up form on your website and/or blog and let people know that you’ll be happy to send them some free awesome content in exchange for their email address. (FYI – I’ve heard the statistic that if your sign up form asks for more than a name and email address your response rate will fall by 50%. So don’t ask for more than those two pieces of information unless you absolutely need it!).

Once you have their email address, send them the content and then keep in touch. The easiest way to do this is to use an auto responder.  An auto responder is a program that will automatically send an email, or a series of emails to people on your list. If you’re not familiar with auto responders, you can learn more about them here.

One last note about your email list. DO NOT SPAM YOUR LIST. If you send spammy, hard-salesy type emails, you will lose the trust of the people on your list and they’ll unsubscribe in droves. It’s okay to mention new products, services, special offers, etc. – just don’t overdo it.

So as you set out marketing online, try to get people to opt-in to your email list. Build your list, respect those on your list, and provide them with quality content and your list will definitely become your business’ most valuable asset.

An Internet Marketing Fundamentals 2-For-1

We’ve been exploring concepts that are important to understand before jumping on the online marketing bandwagon. We’ve looked at two already – why the secret to online marketing is offline and why you should focus on just one thing. We’ll add two more today.

The first is “Do It Wrong Quickly.”

This is the title of a good online marketing book written by Mike Moran (although it’s written more for those in large companies than small business owners).

It’s also is a great phrase that quickly and clearly describes this important concept.

The web allows you to test, sometimes in a matter of hours, how well your marketing strategy is working. Faster, cheaper, and easier than ever before you can see exactly what’s getting the desired response and what isn’t.

The key is to start small and don’t sink most of your marketing budget into a surefire, slam dunk marketing plan that you and/or some marketing consultant came up with. Because it doesn’t matter how great you think the plan is, it only matters what your prospects think. And it’s amazing how frequently what you think and what they think don’t mesh.

So the get it wrong quickly concept is this: start small, see what works, quickly get rid of what doesn’t work, quickly build on what does.

And that leads nicely to the second concept in our 2-for-1 special.

It’s the Pareto Principle, commonly known as the 80/20 rule. This rule basically states the 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts.

To give an example from the world of online marketing – in AdWords you’ll see that 80% (or likely much more) of your results come from 20% of your keywords.

Another example is that you’ll find 80% (again, probably much more) of your video traffic comes from YouTube. The 80/20 rule dictates that it’s not worth posting your videos on every other little video sharing site because the additional traffic you’ll generate won’t be worth the investment of your time.

Let’s put these two concepts together now.

As you “do it wrong quickly” you’ll start finding that some of the things your try work very well – whether they be keywords, Google ads, SEO, article marketing, video marketing, etc.

As you find the ones that work, focus your attention on them.

Optimize them. Refine them. Test them.

You’ll be much more efficient and productive by focusing your attention on the 20% (or 10% or even 1%) of the things that are producing 80% (or 90% or 99%) of the results instead wasting your time on the 80% of things that will only drive 20% of your results.

There are 1000s of ways you can drive traffic to your website and build your online business. You can’t possibly use them all (at least not without a large staff anyway).

So throw some spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks. Then quickly focus 80% or more of your efforts on the ones that do and build your internet empire from there!

Jack Palance’s Secret to Marketing Online

Ever see the movie “City Slickers”?

Jack Palance plays a wise, crusty old cowboy named Curly. There’s a scene in the movie where he shares his secret of life with Billy Crystal’s character Mitch- a middle aged city slicker going through a mid-life crisis.

You can watch the scene on You Tube, but the bottom line is that Curly’s secret to life is this:

“One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that everything else don’t mean shit.”

So what does that have to do with marketing online?

In our last blog post in our “Fundamentals of Marketing Online” series we talked about how overwhelming marketing online can be and one way to make it more manageable (by focusing on core marketing strategies that have proven successful offline).

Another way to make marketing online less intimidating is to take Curly’s advice and just focus on one thing.

You’ll probably never be an expert on using Google AdWords, Facebook, MySpace, article marketing, SEO, copywriting, social bookmarking, video marketing, Twitter, FriendFeed, WordPress, etc. to market your business.

But you can become an expert in just one. Forget about the others. I’m not saying they don’t mean shit, but you can hire an expert to help you with them while you stay focused on your one thing.

I know this is tough to do. There are always cool new marketing tools coming along online. There are always emails in your inbox from one guru or another promising to make your filthy stinking rich if you use their methodology.

I’m not saying to totally ignore them. But focus the majority of your time on your one thing (the 80/20 rule is definitely in effect when it comes to marketing online).

So what one thing should you focus on? Well, Curly’s answer is “that’s what you have to figure out.” And he’s right. It all depends on your business and your goals.

Over the years I’ve hitched my wagon to Google AdWords and copywriting. I think that no matter what businesses I’m involved in, the expertise I’ve developed in those two areas will help immensely.

But they might not be right for you.

So my recommendation is to find what is right for you – your “one thing” – stick to it and master it so you can expertly use it to power your online marketing efforts.

The Secret To Marketing Online is Offline

It’s overwhelming.

When it comes to marketing online there’s PPC, SEO, blogs, article marketing, video marketing, wikis, social networking, social bookmarking, and on and on and on.

Throw in the fact that many people starting businesses online have never run or marketed a business before and overwhelming is an understatement.

So where should you begin?

I’ve found there are a few core concepts to keep in mind that have helped me immensely when marketing online. So to start out our “Fundamentals of Marketing Online” series I’d like to share them with you.

The first of these concepts is: The secret to marketing online is offline.

What I mean by this is if you look at the marketing tools, strategies, and techniques that are proving effective online, they all have their roots in firmly established offline marketing tactics. The Internet may let you market in ways that are easier, faster, and cheaper than ever before, but the underlying principles come from offline marketing fundamentals that have been working long before the Internet was even a glimmer in Al Gore’s eye.

Take Google AdWords for example. Instead of getting caught up in all of its intricacies, first focus on the fact that AdWords is simply direct response marketing on steroids. If you’ve get a solid foundation in the direct response marketing strategies that have been working for decades, creating an effective, successful AdWords campaign becomes much easier.

I think this concept is especially important for those who tend to get intimidated or caught up in technology. My advice is forget about the technology. Become a marketing expert first.

Focus on learning the proven, time-honored, battle-tested marketing practices that have worked offline for years.

Determine which of these practices make the most sense for your market, your product/service, and most importantly, your prospects/customers.

Then find the best tools, techniques, software, etc. available to apply them online.

To get a good foundation in the basics of marketing, there are 3 books (all published long before the Internet reached the masses) that cover core marketing and advertising techniques (particularly direct response) that I’d recommend:

“Ogilvy on Advertising” by David Ogilvy
“Scientific Advertising” by Claude Hopkins
“Tested Advertising Methods” by John Caples

Some more recent books I’d recommend are “Duct Tape Marketing” by John Jantsch and pretty much anything by Seth Godin.

Bottom line: Learn the fundamentals and keep them in mind as you market your business online. Then strategically select and adapt the online marketing techniques that make the most sense for marketing your business.

I’ve found this makes things much simpler than getting caught up in the latest and greatest online tools everyone else seems to be using and trying to adapt them to somehow fit your business.