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)?

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.

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.

Why Entrepreneurs and Parents Need Big Bank Accounts (But Not the Kind You Think)

Think a big balance in the bank will help you run a successful business and raise a family?

There’s no doubt having a lot of money in the bank can help in both cases. But it’s not a requirement. I’d even argue that depending on your definition of success, you can be very successful in business and especially parenthood with not much money at all.

But I’m not talking about money here. There’s another type of bank account that I think is extremely important to being successful as an entrepreneur and a parent.

An Emotional Bank Account.

Let me explain.

A few years ago I attended a lecture by a prominent child psychologist at a local high school. During the talk he explained how he’s come to think of parenting as having a bank account. He said “Early on you need to make as many deposits as you can because come the teenage years, you’re going to be making a lot of withdrawals.”

That got big laughs from the audience. And while funny, there’s a lot of truth to it.

I have not yet experienced sharing a home with a teenager. My daughters still have a way to go (though I know sure that time will arrive much quicker than I’d like!). However, I remember my teenage years. I can say with a high degree of certainty that they were not the most enjoyable years for my parents to have me living under their roof.

But it could have been a lot worse.

While we clashed from time to time, my parents had made a lot of deposits into the emotional bank account when I was younger. As a results, there was a lot of love, respect, and trust between us. And while there were definitely withdrawals made along the way (on both sides), the balance remained high enough to get all of us through those years in very good shape.

When it comes to your business, you need to build an emotional bank account with your customers. Starting with their very first contact as a prospect, it’s critical to start building that balance by nurturing that relationship.

How?

Be reliable.
Be approachable.
Be trustworthy.
Make them feel special.
Underpromise and overdeliver.
Be honest – always!
Make it About You – your customer.

Why is this so important? Because one day, no matter how hard you try to avoid it, something will go wrong.

A server will crash.
A payment will be mishandled.
A miscommunication will occur.
A deadline will be missed.
A campaign will not go as planned.

If you take the time to build up a big emotional bank account with your customers, chances are good they will remain your customers. The emotional account balance you build will not be drained by an occassional withdrawal.

If you fail to grow that balance early and often, then even a little withdrawal can bankrupt your account. And that can have a very real impact on the balance of your actual bank account!

Do you have an example of how building a big emotional bank account has helped you in business or pareting? Please share it below in the comment section.

How To Build a Fortune Online Through Sleep Deprivation

Two ideas that have the potential to make huge amounts of money came to me in the wee hours this morning while unsuccessfully trying to get our 10 week old to sleep.

1. Ambien for Babies. While I have no doubt this would be a huge seller, I’m not entirely comfortable with the idea of drugging my any child (a few more sleepless nights, however, and I may come around).

2. A membership website that teaches parents how to get their babies to sleep through the night.

I thought a lot about the latter between 4:13am and 6:47am this morning and seriously think it could be a goldmine.

You’d be serving a huge market. There are over 130 million babies born worldwide every year which means somewhere between 130 million and 260 million desperate, cranky, sleep-deprived parents searching for solutions. Even if the vast majority don’t have internet access, you’re still left with a pool of millions of parents each year on the verge of being literally willing to give up their first born for some sleep. What’s not to love about those demographics (at least from a business standpoint)?

Marketing will be a snap. It’s often said the key to effective marketing is to identify what’s keeping your prospect up at night. Not terribly difficult to do in this case, is it?

I put together a blueprint for developing and marketing such a site that I’m happy to share here:

• The site should be primarily video based. Bleary-eyed parents can’t see straight and will be in no mood to read.
• The videos should demonstrate various techniques and tips on how to get a baby to sleep, how to get them to sleep through the night, and how to get them on a regular sleeping schedule.
• When babies appear in these videos, make sure you only show them sleeping. Two main reasons. One, you’re selling hope. Nothing is going to be more hopeful to parents then to see a sleeping baby (even if it’s not theirs at the moment). Second, hearing the sound of another kid screaming could very well push sleep deprived parents over the edge.
• Include a message board so parents can create support groups and trade additional tips and techniques on how to get their little bundles of joy to sleep at night.

Once you’ve got the content developed, it’s on to marketing. I’m a big fan of Google AdWords (though as an Google AdWords Professional, I’m a bit biased). Running a campaign to sell a product like this should be a snap, but here are a few tips to optimize your AdWords campaign’s performance:

• Use the “Advanced Ad Scheduling” feature in AdWords. This lets you adjust your bid prices depending on the time of day. Be sure to increase your bid prices between midnight and 6AM. While I usually don’t recommend bidding for the top spot in the AdWords rankings, it’s probably not a bad idea in this case. You’re going to want your ads to appear as high up in the rankings as possible so they are the first thing a parent sees when doing a search.
• Keyword research is always, well, key to a successful AdWords campaign. Here are a few keywords to get you started: “How to get a baby to sleep”, “my baby won’t sleep”, “baby sleeping tips”, “baby sleeping problems” and “AAAAHHHHHHH!”.
• Be sure to also use some “turn the corner” keywords. This is a strategy where you find keywords that are likely to have people searching on them who need your product or service, but they just don’t know it yet. In this case, think keywords related to birth control and adoption.

So there you have it – a blueprint to get you started on building and marketing an incredible membership site that will have the SWISS money piling in. If you run with this idea be sure to let me know when you have your site up. I’ll be your first member. In the meantime, PLEASE post whatever tips you have on getting a fussy baby to sleep in the comment section.

P.S. Check back here soon for more on membership sites. While I had some fun with this post, creating a membership site is, I believe, one of the most viable online business models out there. I’ll have more on them in future posts, but first I need a nap.

The Creativity Habit

“. . .the more new things we try — the more we step outside our comfort zone — the more inherently creative we become, both in the workplace and in our personal lives.”

This excerpt is from a fascinating article in the New York Times. While on the surface it may not appear the article has much to do with running a successful business online or off, I’d argue habits and creativity have everything to do with it.

The One Thing You Must Understand About Doing Business Online

There’s a lot of talk about the internet and the “new” way of doing business or the changing face of business. What easily gets lost in all the excitement of building and running an online business is that the fundamentals of building and running a successful business remain the same.

Before starting an online business or taking your business online, you must understand:

There’s nothing new online, just a new and (usually) more efficient way of doing it.

So remember:

• Blogs are just a way to start a conversation with prospects and customers
• Social networking sites are just a way to meet people and expand your network of contacts (aka “sphere of influence”)
• Wikis are just a way of collaborating with customers
• Websites are just a way of presenting your sales message, company information, products, etc. to prospects and customers
• Google AdWords is just a form of direct mail (on steroids)
• Podcasts, emails, and web feeds are just a way of letting customers subscribe to your message (ie. giving you permission to share information with them)

All these tools provide a more efficient means to accomplish your goals. However, to build a successful online business:

You still have to provide a product or service that people want.
You still have to demonstrate the value of that product or service.
You still have focus on your customers’ needs, not yours.
You still have to provide excellent customer service.
You still have to work hard.
You still have to deliver the goods.
You still have to exceed expectations.
You still have to reach the right audience with the right message at the right time.
You still have to build a loyal following.
You still have to put in the time.

Henry Ford’s assembly line made building cars faster, easier and cheaper than every before. However, if his process had produced a pile of crap and he had given no thought to what his customers wanted, Ford would not have succeeded.

The internet makes it faster, easier, and cheaper to do business, and with a far greater reach, than ever before. But if you get caught up in the technology and forget about the underlying fundamentals, the internet also makes it faster and easier, though not necessarily cheaper, to go out of business than ever before.