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!

Are You Using Automatic Matching in AdWords?

The recently expanded Automatic Matching feature in AdWords came up at a client meeting the other day.

Here’s Google’s explanation of what automatic matching is:

Automatic matching is an optional feature that helps your ads reach targeted traffic missed by your keyword lists. It works by analyzing the ads, keywords, and landing pages in your ad group. It then shows your ads on search queries relevant to this information.

This feature originally appeared in some accounts in February and was greatly, yet quietly, expanded in May. The program has taken a lot of heat because advertisers were automatically opted in to this program. So if you don’t want this feature running in your account, you have to go in turn it off yourself.

There are some who think this is a conspiracy by Google to bleed every last penny out of advertisers’ budgets. I’m not that cynical, but I do wish advertisers had to opt in to the program instead of opt out of it.

Conspiracy or not, my feeling is that most advertisers are better served by not using automatic matching. The reason why comes down to one question:

Do you want control of your advertising budget or do you want Google to?

Google has already had a form of automatic matching in their campaigns for a long time – it’s called broad match. With broad match, you greatly expand the number of search queries that will trigger your ads. The downside is that your ads may be triggered by search queries that have absolutely nothing to do with your business. This can be a bid budget waster.

Automatic matching greatly expands the universe of search queries over what broad match alone would do. While this may bring in some additional quality keywords that you might otherwise miss, I think more often than not it will eat up your budget with traffic that’s not highly targeted to your business.

If you do decide to give automatic matching a try, here are a few tips:

1. Run search query reports and watch your server logs frequently to see what search terms are triggering your ads. If you start finding a lot of terms that aren’t relevant to your business, either turn off automatic matching or add a bunch of negative keywords to your campaign.

If you find some keywords that are relevant to your business, add them to your keyword list and optimize your ads and landing pages for them.

2. Make sure your daily budget is capped at a number you can afford.

3. Monitor your daily spend and conversions closely to see how much more you are spending due to automatic matching and what you’re getting in return. If the ROI isn’t there, opt out.

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.

8 Business Lessons From My Broken Kenmore Refrigerator

What a joke.

Last Friday, my 3 ½ year old Kenmore refrigerator stopped working. At the time I’m writing this, almost a week later, it’s still not working.

Here’s a recap of this comedy of errors and the lessons you can learn . . .

1. I’m home with my 4 month old and notice the refrigerator makes a loud click, the motor turns on for about 5 seconds, then it clicks again and shuts off. I open it up, and while the contents are still cold, the fridge is not blowing cold air anymore. Realizing time is of the essence, I stuff a 5 week supply of frozen breast milk from the freezer into a cooler and rush it to my wife’s office to store in the freezer there.

Lesson #1: Frozen breast milk is worth more than gold. If you have some stored in your freezer and that supply is put at risk, do whatever it takes to save it. Whatever the solution, it’s a lot less expensive than hiring a psychologist to help your wife recover from the loss. (While I realize this is not a business lesson and most people reading this will never encounter this situation, believe me, if you do, you’ll thank me!).

2. I returned home after successfully delivering the payload before it melted and called Sears to come out to repair the refrigerator. I am pretty much forced to use Sears because the expensive parts of the refrigerator are still under warranty. I’m told they have no service appointments until Monday.

That put us in a real bind. We had medication for the baby and fresh breast milk in the fridge (not to mention food for us). No matter how much I explained the situation and pleaded with them, I was told there was nothing they could do for us.

So faced with having no refrigerator for the weekend, I rush out (cursing Sears along the way) to buy a mini-fridge so we can at least stock the essentials until the repair man comes. I save a few things, but have to toss most of what was in our fridge and freezer.

Lesson #2: If you have a customer in a bind, what can you do to help them? What contingency plans could you put in place to make sure they get the help they need? In this case, could Sears have offered the option of a loaner fridge for the weekend or let me talk with a service technician to see if perhaps there’s an easy or temporary solution to the problem?

One way to turn customers into raving fans that sing your praises from the rooftops is to come up big in their time of need.

3. The technician comes out on Monday and as soon as I describe the problem, he tells me it’s the starter relay – which, of course, is not under warranty.

The good news is that it’s only a $30 part.
The bad news is that labor costs $200 (plus a $10 gas surcharge).
The worst news is that he doesn’t have the part in stock and couldn’t get it and come back until Thursday to make the repair.

The tech is a nice guy and shows me how easy it is to install this myself and tells me where I can order the part online as well as a local store that might have it in stock.

Lesson #3: Be prepared. I explained the problem to the scheduler on Friday and would think it was on the repair ticket. If the repair man knew exactly what the problem was when I described it to him, could he (or someone else in his company) looked at my ticket BEFORE he came out? Then maybe they could have made sure they had the part that would likely fix my problem, saving me and him a wasted service call.

How can you anticipate your customers’ needs and be prepared before you are in front of them and have tell them you can’t give them what they need?

4. I call the local company the tech mentioned, Marcone Appliance Parts Center in St. Louis. It’s a little after 4PM. After being on hold for 54 minutes and hearing over and over again how important my call and customer service is to them, I get disconnected at 5PM when their phones shut off. I vow never to use Marcone – ever!

Lesson #4: Back up your words with action. As a copywriter, I’m acutely aware of the importance of words and the messages they convey. I’m also acutely aware that if you don’t back up your words and messages with action, you lose all credibility. Don’t bullshit your prospects with empty rhetoric or promises, you’ll only piss them off.

5. I order the part online from SearsPartsDirect.com. The site shows the part is in stock and with expedited shipping, I can have it by Wednesday. 24 hours later I check my order status and it now shows the part is backordered. I call SearsPartsDirect.com and they can’t tell me when the part might ship. I tell them I want to cancel the order. They tell me once an order has been placed, they can’t cancel it.

Yes, that’s right. I placed the order on the understanding that it was in stock and would get to me by Wednesday. Now it turns out that not only is that not the case, but they won’t allow me to cancel my order of a backordered part that hasn’t shipped yet! The rep happily lets me know that once I get the part, I can easily return it. I ask if that includes the cost for the expedited shipping I paid for (which cost almost as much as the part itself) and am told the refund would only cover the part itself – not the shipping.

After demanding to speak with a supervisor, I’m transferred a department they actually called “Customer Resolution.” I pitch enough of a fit and am told, as it turns out, they can cancel my order.

Lesson #5: If you tell a customer you can meet their needs, meet them. Deliver the goods as promised in the timeframe you promised it. Bonus points here if you deliver more than expected, faster than they expect it.

Lesson #6: Don’t enact stupid-ass policies that make no sense. If a customer wants to cancel the arrangement before any goods or services are delivered, then make it as easy as possible to do it.

Lesson #7: If you need a department in your company called “Customer Resolution,” that’s a pretty big clue that Customer Service needs a big overhaul.

7. I order the part from an online store (which I found using Google AdWords) and it supposedly will arrive by FedEx Thursday morning. Hopefully, the part number the Sears repairman gave me is the right one and the part works, but at this point I’m making no assumptions. If it doesn’t work, I’m getting rid of our Kenmore refrigerator and buying a new non-Kenmore one from someplace not named Sears.

Lesson #8: Everything you do in your company is marketing. Your customer service, the quality of your product, what customers hear when they are on hold, your billing and cancellation policies, etc.

All these things affect people’s impressions of your company/brand and their decisions to buy from you or not. You can spend millions building a brand and trying to get customers in the door only to have sloppy customer service, shoddy products or service, and dumb policies sabotage it all. This is even more true in the Internet age where pissed off customers can vent their frustrations on message boards, review sites and blogs.

I hope the lessons outlined in this blog are helpful and can make at least some good to come out of this debacle. Oh, one last thing, if you ever need a new refrigerator, I’d recommend staying away from Sears. I know I will.

(Update: Partselect.com and FedEx came through and we now have a working refrigerator!)

Two Reasons Why Google AdWords Just Became Even More Powerful

Google just upped the ante when it comes to pay per click advertising. I was already convinced that Google AdWords was the most powerful advertising tool to come along in a very long time. That’s even more true today.

Google recently announced two significant changes to AdWords that will be a huge improvement for all AdWords advertisers.

1. An Improved Keyword Tool

Once upon a time Yahoo!’s Overture Keyword Tool was the tool of choice for internet marketers researching keywords online. For some reason, however, Yahoo!’s done away with it (want to know why Yahoo!’s struggled, it’s decisions like these). One of the key features of Overture is was that it would give you traffic estimates for your keywords, something Google’s Keyword Tool did not.

No more. Google’s improved Keyword Tool now lets you see estimated search volumes for keywords. It also displays a graph of each keyword’s search volume trends for the last 12 months and tells you which month over the past year had the highest search volume for each keyword.

It gets even better. Not only can you get search volume estimates for broad matches of your keywords, but for exact and phrase matches too. This shows you how including or excluding the various match types in your campaign will effect the amount of traffic you can expect.

But wait, there’s more! Google throws negative keywords into the equation as well. The improved Keyword Tool lets you view a list of potential negative keywords and the search volume you’d expect for each. In this case, though, the estimated search volume you see will indicate how much less traffic you can expect by adding that negative keyword. Strategically adding a lot of negative keywords can go a long way toward boosting your CTR and prevent you from wasting a lot of money on irrelevant impressions/clicks.

2. Advanced Content Network

This feature gives advertisers more control over ads in the content network. The Advanced Content Network allows advertisers to combine keyword and placement targeted campaigns in one campaign. What does that mean?

A placement targeted campaign allows advertisers to target specific websites on which to run their ads. However, up until now Google would take a look at your keywords, come up with a “theme” for the keywords in an AdGroup and run your ads on sites that it thought matched that theme. The problem for advertisers is that one of your keywords could be “industrial work positioners” and your ad would appear on a website detailing sex positions (I’ve actually seen this happen!). Needless to say, Google’s idea of an AdGroup’s theme does not always match what the advertisers theme actually is.

The new Advanced Content Network can help advertisers avoid those problems. Now you can bid on specific keywords (not a theme), select what websites you want your ads to run on, and have your ads appear only on the web pages on those sites that contain your keywords.

The really nice thing about this Advance Content Network is you can now adjust your bids based on specific keyword and placement combinations. So if you find your ads perform especially well on a few websites, you can increase your bids just for those sites to hopefully get more impressions, more clicks, and more sales. (By the same token you can lower your bids for sites that don’t perform as well.)

I’ve just started experimenting with this new feature this week and need more time to kick the tires on it. However, from the looks of things, advertising on Google’s content network just got a whole lot more enticing.

3 Ways to Deal With the Dreaded Google Slap

Reports of skyrocketing minimum bids. Pissed off advertisers complaining on message boards and blogs. That must mean it’s “Google Slap” time again!

Google Slap, for the uninitiated, is when many AdWords advertisers find that Google’s algorithm tweaks have caused Quality Scores to drop and minimum bid prices that were under $1 to go to $5 – $10 overnight.

Why does this happen? Google is Google because it strives to provide the most relevant search results to its users. This is true in the organic search results as well as in AdWords. The algorithm Google uses to determine relevance changes constantly as Google keeps trying to improve the search results for its users. Every now and then, these changes can be significant.

When this happens, advertisers whose keywords, ads and landing pages still provide relevant results in Google’s eye have nothing to worry about. However, advertisers whose campaigns fail to live up to the new standards get punished, or “slapped.” If you log into your AdWords account one morning and see your minimum bid prices have rocketed and many keywords have become “Inactive for search” – you’re the victim of the “Google Slap.”

So if you’ve been slapped, what can you do?

Here are 3 options for AdWords advertisers to deal with Google Slap:

1. Pay the increased bid prices. If Google says you need to pay at least $5 or $10 per click, you could just raise your bid prices to those levels. For those selling high priced, high margin products or services, this may be an option. It’s not an option, however, for those selling items where the lifetime value of a customer is a few hundred bucks or less. Whatever the case, I don’t recommend this option.

2. Find out how you offended Google and fix it. If Google doesn’t think you’re relevant for the keywords you’re bidding on, find out why and fix it.

Often your website is the culprit. Adding more content to your site (especially your landing page) that contains the keywords you’re bidding on can help your bring those Quality Scores back up and minimum bid prices back down. I’d definitely recommend testing this option out before even thinking about option #1.

3. Advertise elsewhere. I think AdWords is the most powerful marketing system to come along in a very long time. But it’s not for everyone. And I would never recommend compromising your business model just to make Google happy.

If you’ve tested your site out and discovered that a one page sales letter site makes the most sense for your business but Google doesn’t like it – don’t change it! Take your advertising dollars elsewhere. Get traffic from other sources (which you should be doing anyway). Try video marketing, article marketing, SEO, affiliates, or even (gasp!) offline promotions. AdWords is not the only game in town.

3 Mistakes You’re Probably Making in AdWords

“Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.”
-Eleanor Roosevelt

A number of small business owners have hired me to review Google AdWords accounts they’ve set up. I’ve noticed a number of the same mistakes over and over again in these campaigns. If you’ve set up your own AdWords account, chances are you’re making the same mistakes too.

Here are 3 of the biggies that you should fix immediately!

1. Not split testing ads. Split testing is the most powerful, yet underused feature in AdWords.

A split test is basically a competition for your AdWords ads. You have two or more competitors in each AdGroup that run against each other. The one the generates the best response from the audience is the winner. Then you bring in new competitors to try to beat the winner. By letting your prospects pick the winners, over time, you end up with the ad that gets the gold medal in bringing you lots of gold (or, cash, if you prefer).

One bonus mistake I’ll mention that’s related to split testing. When split testing, go into your campaign settings to the “Ad serving” option under “Advanced Settings” and make sure you select “Rotate: Show ads more evenly.” Leaving the default option of “show the better performing ad more often,” will skew your results and won’t give you a good read on which ads are the true winners.

2. Running keywords on Google search and the content network in the same campaign. Google gives you a few options of where your ads will show:

1. Google search shows your ads when someone searches for your keywords on Google.com
2. Search network shows your ads when someone searches for your keywords on Google’s search partner sites (ie. AOL.com and Ask.com)
3. Content network shows your ads when someone visits a webpage in Google’s content network that Google believes is relevant to your keywords (these can be sites ranging from the New York Times down to Joe Blow’s blog)

Google search and the search network are a very different beast than the content network. On Google search and the search network people are typing in keywords related to your business. This means they are actively searching for something related to what you offer. They have a conversation going on in their brains at that very moment that makes them a highly relevant and motivated prospect.

People surfing the pages on Google’s content network sites are not actively looking for you. They are in a much different mindset than someone who’s actively typing in keywords. You have to interrupt the people on the content network to get their attention. The clicks you get from the content network are often not as high a quality as those you’ll get from search traffic.

These differences between search and content traffic have a few implications for your AdWords campaigns. First, the ad text that might work on search, might not work in content and vice versa. Second, the bidding strategies are different. Generally clicks are less expensive on content than on search. Lastly, having content and search in the same campaign can throw off the results of your split tests. And as we learned above, split testing is vital to your success so you want your results to be as accurate as possible.

Content and search traffic don’t play nicely together. So while it may take more time to set up and monitor the same keywords in separate campaigns, it’s time well spent.

3. No negative keywords. Keyword research is essential to success in AdWords. But keyword research is not just about finding the search terms that will drive relevant traffic to your website. It’s also important to find search terms that may drive irrelevant traffic to your website. This is especially important when using the broad matching option in AdWords.

I’ll make up an example. Let’s say you have a company that manufactures raffle tickets that are sold to charities for their fundraisers. If you bid on the broad match keyword ‘raffle tickets’, it’s possible that your ads will appear for search terms such as ‘airline tickets’, ‘football tickets’, ’speeding tickets’, etc.

It’s easy to blow a sizable chunk of your AdWords budget on irrelevant traffic. Adding a comprehensive list of negative keywords can go a long way towards making sure visitors to your site are actually interested in what you have to offer.

There are a few places you can find good candidates for negative keywords.

• Keyword research tools like the Google Keyword Tool or Wordtracker.
• Running a “Search Query” report in AdWords which will give you a list of search terms that have triggered your ads.
• Looking at your website logs to see what search terms people are typing in to find your site.
• Your brain.

So there you have it. Three mistakes (plus a bonus) that many small business owners make in AdWords. Eliminate them from your campaigns and you will improve your CTRs, Quality Scores and drive higher quality traffic to your site.

One Simple Slogan. Two Powerful Lessons.

As I was driving down the street the other day, a red moving truck caught my eye. On the truck was the company’s name and slogan:

Simple Moves – We move what you can’t

As a copywriter, I love the slogan. It serves as a great example for other businesses to emulate.

The lesson is keep it simple. The Simple Moves slogan gets right at the heart of what they do. They didn’t try to get cute. There’s no wordplay to try and show how clever they are. They’re not trying to get you to laugh.

Many companies fall into these traps when coming up with a slogan. But in gloating over how cute, clever and funny they are they don’t realize that their customers don’t care about those things. Customers just want to know what you can do for them. A great slogan (and headline, sales letter, AdWords ad, etc.) does that simply and directly.

And the Simple Moves slogan hits the mark. It lays out exactly what service they provide their customers (and implies what they don’t). It’s not cute. It’s not clever. It’s not funny. It’s just effective.

The second lesson to take away here is to be a niche player. Instead of competing with the big, expensive moving companies, Simple Moves has carved out a niche for themselves. Local, small moves. You want to move your clothes, sliverware, and bottle cap collection yourself, great! You want help with your furniture, large appliances and your piano, Small Moves is your company.

Does your company slogan clearly and simply tell prospects exactly what you do?

Does your company try to be everything to everybody or have you carved out a niche that you can dominate?

I can’t say whether doing these things have helped Simple Moves become a successful company. I do, however, appreciate the way they have positioned themselves and the lessons we can all take away from their example.

Do you have examples of slogans that have captured your attention for better or worse? Post them in the comment section.

Business Lessons From a Toddler: You Can’t Walk Before You Crawl

Babies don’t come out of the womb wearing their Nikes ready to run. It takes a good year or so before they are able to take their first steps.

There’s a natural progression that most babies go through to get there – picking their heads up, rolling over, playing while on their tummmies, sitting up, crawling, standing up, and then walking. During each one of those stages, a baby develops, practices, and refines the skills – such as hand-eye coordination, depth perception, and the muscles – they need to start walking. If a baby skips any step along the way, the ultimate goal, walking, becomes much more difficult, if not impossible to achieve.

Business owners often fall into that trap of skipping steps in trying to grow their business. This often leads to disastrous results. Just look to Boston Market and Krispy Kreme as two well-known examples of businesses who paid the price for trying to run before they could crawl.

You can’t open your doors for business one day and expect to have the next Microsoft, Amazon.com, or eBay. There’s a natural progression needed to develop all the parts of a business. Each successful step along the way builds on the previous ones. Go too quickly or skip some steps along the way and the business will fall flat on its face.

This lesson is especially important for individuals that want to start an online business and develop a stream of SWISS Money. There is a tendency to want to rush things. You get bombarded with emails from internet gurus who have supposedly built huge fortunes and tell you that you can too if you just follow a few easy steps.

It just doesn’t work that way. The internet gurus who have built huge fortunes haven’t done so overnight. It took time for them to learn the skills they needed to start that huge flow of SWISS Money their way. They developed, practiced and refined their copywriting, sales, technology, direct response, and AdWords skills.

They built huge mailing lists.
They researched their target audiences.
They tested their marketing messages.

At each step along they way they developed the skills needed to successfully get to the next level. Those that did this have the SWISS Money flowing in. Those who went to fast and skipped steps in the development of their business – don’t.

As you grow your online or offline business(es), never take your eyes off your ultimate goal. Just don’t push things so that you try to get there before you, and the business, are ready. Because you will fall flat on your face.

Make sure you have the necessary skills and support structure in place so you can confidently and successfully take each step along the way to reaching your goals.

Because when building a successful business, as with babies learning to walk, you can’t walk before you crawl.