Adam Kreitman Is Now The Rise To The Top’s Internet Marketing Expert

An exciting day for me and my company, Words That Click.

I’ve teamed up with David Siteman Garland of The Rise To The Top to become a sponsor of, and Internet Marketing Expert for, his emerging new media empire!

David and I both come from a long line of entrepreneurs and have a passion for entrepreneurism coursing through our veins. I’m thrilled that I’ll be working with him to develop the web presence for TRTTT which is “THE source for entrepreneurial education and lifestyle design for young, emerging, and established entrepreneurs and business professionals.”

A major component of The Rise To The Top is a TV show which airs in St. Louis at 5 PM on WRBU-my46 TV every Saturday and at 1 AM on KDNL-ABC30 every Wednesday night after Jimmy Kimmel Live. Shows are also available 24/7 at www.therisetothetop.com.

David’s assembled an impressive list of experts and guests that will be sharing their passion and experience with aspiring and accomplished entrepreneurs. And people are already paying attention – the show’s second episode was seen by 100,000 on TV in St. Louis.

As The Rise To The Top’s Internet Marketing Expert, I’ll be on each show starting in January on a segment called “Build Your Business Online.” In the segment I’ll be providing viewers with a tip, strategy and/or other interesting tidbit about how to market their business on the Internet. Additional material will be provided online in the educational packet that accompanies each show.

I’ll also be helping David in promoting and growing the company’s popular website and blog. There are already lots of exciting plans in the works – be sure to check the TRTTT website often in the weeks and months ahead!

A Web Design Fairy Tale

Once upon a time there was an incredibly intelligent and amazingly adorable little 9 month old girl (though I’m a bit biased!).

This little baby loved looking at books. She would sit on her floor and turn the pages one-by-one, get to the end of the book, flip it over and start all over again.

For the books she really enjoyed, she’d flip through them 5 – 10 times in a row before she getting bored and moving on to something else. Other books, however, she would toss aside as soon as she turned to the first page.

One day her father (no slouch in his own right) noticed something. The books that she quickly tossed aside were very busy. They had lots of pictures, colors, text and more. It was hard to focus on any one thing. Frustrated and overwhelmed by these books, his darling daughter would quickly move on to something more appealing.

This made the father wonder, “if babies are overwhelmed by lots of pictures, colors, text and more in a book, why would many website owners and designers think things are any different for their site visitors?”

It seems pretty obvious – people visiting a website want to find exactly what they’re looking for FAST! If they don’t, they won’t make it past the first page and will quickly move on to another, more appealing site.

Yet so many still try to cram every last graphic, offer, and piece of information they can on their home page (or, even worse, their landing pages).

If they would only keep things clean and simple . . . if they would make it easy for visitors to find what they’re looking for . . . if they would stop trying to tell their whole story on one page of their site . . .

then customers would be more likely to stay on the site and buy something, or contact them, or sign up for their newsletter.

An then everyone would live happily ever after.

Seth Godin Is Writing About You

Best selling author, top blogger, “America’s Greatest Marketer,” and fellow smokin’ hot piece of brain candy (sorry, couldn’t resist) Seth Godin is writing about you.

This paragraph from his recent post “Death of the Personal Blog?” caught my attention:

There’s a difference between a blog about YOU (I call this a cat blog) and a blog about the reader. Guy Kawasaki’s blog, and my blog for that matter, are not about us, about what we ate yesterday or how great we are. They are about you, the reader.

It’s really pretty simple. If you want:

• people to read your blog;
• people to follow you on Twitter;
• prospects to come to your website;
• sales -

you have to make it About You – the reader, the follower, the prospect, the customer.

Nichify Your Name

The arrival was highly anticipated.

Then early one beautiful fall morning, the truck arrived with what we’d been waiting for . . . a brand spanking new front loading washing machine – and a dryer to match.

(When you have an 8 month old that is a serious laundry making machine, a new energy efficient, back-saving, programmable washer and dryer with storage pedestals, is a life changer.)

But there was a problem. The pressure of the valves opening and closing in the washer caused a water hammer in our pipes. This is when the pipes shake and shudder so violently that eventually it sounds like they will break open creating a lake in the basement. Not good.

After consulting with my official plumbing problem adviser (Google), I found that there are devices called water arrestors which can be installed to reduce, if not eliminate the problem.

There were a lot of water arrestors out there, and not being an expert, I had no idea which one to choose. And that brings us to the point of this post.

After performing a few searches I came across a search result from Lowe’s that shows they carry something called a “washing machine arrester.” It was the only search result for water arrestors that mentioned washing machines, and they had it available at the local Lowe’s.

SOLD!

When I found the device at Lowe’s, I immediately noticed something that gave me pause. Nowhere on the packaging did it say “washing machine.” It was definitely the same device that came up in my search results – looked the same, had the same manufacturer and price. It just didn’t say “water machine arrestor” on the package. The packaging called it a “mini-rester.”

That’s when Lowe’s marketing smarts dawned on me. If they had called the device a “mini-rester” I’m not sure I would have bought it. By nichifying the name and calling it a “washing machine arrester” on their website, they positioned the product as THE solution for people like me who have washing machines that make their water pipes dance.

Brilliant!

So that begs the question, can you nichify the name of your product or service? How do you take the same labels that everyone else is using – consultant, web developer, battery, etc. – and nichify it so you stand out from the crowd?

Instead of a consultant, could you be THE small business social media consultant?

Instead of a web developer, could you be THE web developer for upscale local restaurants?

Instead of selling a battery, could you sell THE rechargeable battery for portable electronic devices?

Because when you use a name to nichify yourself to become “THE” something instead of “a” something, you make your prospects decision to use you (or buy from you) a lot easier.

I’ll leave you to ponder all this while I go do some more laundry.

3 Overlooked Lessons From Obama’s Online Marketing Success

There’s a huge buzz in internet marketing circles and the popular press these days about the role President-elect Barack Obama’s online efforts played in him wining the election.

And rightly so. From Pay Per Click ads to email marketing to social networking, the Obama campaign put together an internet marketing juggernaut the likes of which has never been seen in politics. In fact, it’s not a stretch to say the likes of their effort has never been seen on the internet – period.

However, the coverage in the media and blogosphere focuses on the methods – Facebook, Twitter, email marketing, Google AdWords, website design, etc. – while overlooking what made this all so effective.

Here are the three main things I think have been overlooked and what you can learn from them. . .

1. Strong Message and Content First

Tens of millions of Americans felt a strong emotional and psychological connection to Barack Obama and his message. I’ll leave it for the political commentators to cover the details of the reasons why this is so – I’m not trying to make a political statement here, I’m just stating the facts.

But it was this strong connection and how it moved people that was at the heart of the success of the campaign – both online and off. Armed with a powerful message, it was then up to the campaign’s marketing team to develop content that reflected that message and then figure out the most effective ways to deliver that content online.

LESSON: Online, content is king. You can emulate everything that Obama’s campaign did online and still fall flat on your face if you don’t provide quality content that strongly resonates with your target market.

Your job as a marketer is to find out what your market wants and desires, then develop quality content that satisfies those wants and desires.

This comes FIRST.

Figuring out how to use Facebook, Twitter, blogs, email, etc. to effectively reinforce and deliver that message comes later.

2. He Made it About You

On a number of occasions throughout the campaign, Obama made a point of saying that the campaign is not about him, it’s about you – the people of the United States. (Of course this ‘about you’ talk resonated with me!)

And Obama’s social networking strategy reinforced this message. The campaign built a social networking infrastructure that made people feel more involved and connected to the candidate. They felt like they were being listened to and what they said and did mattered.

LESSON: It’s arguably the biggest mistake marketers make – talking about themselves.

No one cares. They want to know how you, your products and your services are going to make their lives better. How you can help them do or become something they want to be.

The best way to do this is listen to people. Get them involved. Engage them. Make them feel important.

Social media sites – Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, YouTube – are a great way to do this. Use these tools to build a community of followers (or Tribe, as Seth Godin calls it) that believes in you and your message. Lead them. And be sure to make it about them and not yourself.

3. Go Where Your Prospects Hang Out

Obama got a lot of support from younger voters. And a lot of these younger voters hang out online on places like Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. If Obama’s support came from the nursing home set this strategy would have been ineffective.

LESSON: It’s easier for you to go where your prospects hang out then to get them to come to you. Do your research. Find out where they are and then get there too.

The Bottom Line

I’ve seen some articles crediting Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. with delivering the election to Obama. While there’s no denying the campaign did a masterful job in utilizing these tools to help Obama to victory, there’s more to the story.

I’ve said before that the key to online marketing is offline. And it’s precisely because the Obama online marketing team understood that, they were so successful.

As evidence, I include this excerpt from Newsweek (emphasis mine):

“I don’t care about online energy and enthusiasm just for the sake of online energy and enthusiasm,” said Chris Hughes, head of New Media’s social networking. “It’s about making money, making phone calls, embedding video or having video forwarded to friends.” There was nothing starry-eyed about Hughes, who had been the Harvard roommate and later partner of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and made his first millions before he was 24. His goal was to make old techniques – like call centers and getting polling information to voters more efficient. “When computer applications really take off, they take something people have always done and just make it easier for them to do it,” he said. “And maybe bigger.”

And that’s the big overall lesson (and bonus Lesson #4) here for online marketers. Take timeless marketing fundamentals and strategies that have worked offline for years and then find the tools available online that will help you execute them faster, easier and more effectively than has ever been possible.

Doing that may not win you the presidency, but it may just help you build your own little internet empire to rule over.

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!

Who Prospered During The Great Depression?

Whether or not we’re headed toward a depression, this seems like a timely question to ask.

So I decided to research it and here’s what I found.

The companies that not only survived, but came out of the Great Depression with flying colors are the ones that kept advertising.

It’s easy to pull way back on the purse strings when times are tough. Most people do. While that may be a wise strategy for a family or individual’s budget, it’s not a wise one when it comes to your company and its marketing budget. But that’s exactly what most companies do during economic downturns.

And the fact that most companies are so quick to cut their advertising and marketing dollars creates an even bigger opportunity for those that don’t.

In good times or bad:  if people can’t find you, if they don’t know you exist, if you don’t remind them you exist, it doesn’t matter how good, affordable, convenient, etc. you are – they can’t buy from you.

Especially in tough economic climates, if you put your company in hibernation mode there’s a good chance it won’t wake up.

One of my all-time favorite quotes is by Warren Buffet:

“Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.”

For investors, that means when people are scared of the stock market and are emotionally selling off their investments while running around yelling “the sky is falling, the sky is falling” sending stock prices into a free fall – it’s exactly the right time to start pouring your money into the market.

It’s not easy. It takes guts to do. But over time, investors who do this are very well rewarded.

And so it is with advertising your business. When times are tough, it’s easy to panic and keep a tight lid on spending. But when everyone starts doing that, it presents an incredible opportunity for the businesses that take the opposite approach and maintain or increase their advertising budgets.

It’s not easy. It takes guts to do. But history shows that companies that do this are very well rewarded.

If you’re interested in digging into this topic a little more, here’s a great write up on Google Answers.

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)?