Business Coaching

Predictably Irrational - Bronze beats Silver Medal

Sounds crazy doesn't it but research by Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational says:
The silver medalist is disappointed because the natural comparison is with the winner of the gold medal.

The bronze medalist is delighted because the natural comparison is with the fourth placed and the people further behind and feels delighted to have won a medal.

There is an excellent 45 minute interview with Dan Ariely on the Rich Schefren blog the which can be downloaded.

It gives plenty of examples about how this can be used for the marketers advantage.

I have talked about this one before but if you offer a lower priced item and a higher priced item, more people will choose the lower priced product.

Add a third even more expensive product and suddenly, the value comparison is raised and more people start selecting the middle item.

It really is a great interview and it's free to download without any sign-up.

You can also lean more from Dan Ariely's website and even volunteer to take part in future experiments and as an incentive receive the inside track on the results. I have signed up and this looks to be another book I will be buying.

As always with effective marketing to the emotions and the unconscious minds and any form of mind control, it can be used for good to help people make the right decision for them (remember Jay Abraham's saying that "people are silently begging to be led") or manipulated into purchasing self-serving offers from the marketer.

As Mark Joyner decided when he re-released his book Mind Control Marketing, the best way to protect yourself is to know about these techniques so that you can be aware of when they may be carrying an inappropriate weight of influence.

Here are some of Dan Ariely's videos which help explain the concepts of Predictably Irrational.

Video 1 - Introduction - experiments in pain

Video 2 - Truth about relativity

 

Fascinating and I will be adding the extra videos but I must press on.

To Your Success

Your Profit Coach

Paul Simister

Business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs

Power Of Emotional Marketing At Work

It is often said that people buy because of emotional reasons and then justify the purchase decision to themselves rationally and for many purchases it is true.

You don't need (logical) but you want (emotional) and sometimes you want with an overwhelming passion that means that you have a compulsion to buy despite yourself.

I am fascinated by this entire topic of marketing to the emotions and how it can be used for the purposes of good but also how people can and need to be protected from marketing manipulation for purposes of the seller's self interest.

There are words and emotional triggers that pull us into written copy or the salesman's pitch and make us want to find out more and then persuade us to buy.

In "All Marketers Are Liars", top author and marketer Seth Godin argued that it is a conspiracy to which we are willing participants. We want the marketing message to be so compelling that it gives us the ammunition to justify buying something we want, both to ourselves and to other people.

Joe Vitale and Hypnotic Writing

One of the most famous copywriters and practitioners of persuasion and hypnotic techniques is Dr Joe Vitale (you may remember him from The Secret film which advocated the law of attraction).

Joe Vitale has written a long list of books which look at hypnotic marketing and persuasion techniques and he has recently released Hypnotic Marketing 2.0.

To be honest I have been trying to cut down on the information products I buy. I have too large a backlog of items waiting for review and as my blog gets bigger and more influential, I am being offered more and more items free of charge for me to cast my eye over and give it the thumbs up or down.

Emotional Marketing & The Link To My Credit Card

So I have watched the first two emails roll in promoting Hypnotic Marketing and I chose to ignore them but the third one came this morning, hit one of my buying buttons so with my resistance broken, I whipped out my credit card, bought and while I am writing this, a host of goodies are bing downloaded to my computer.

Warning - Hypnotic Marketing At Work

As always these launches are interesting to watch so I thought that I would repeat the sequences of emails. You have been warned so don't blame me if your credit card shoots out of your wallet faster than a speeding bullet.

Hypnotic Marketing Email 1 - What Can IT Be?

He's being quiet about IT.

The only information that we can get out of him is that IT is big and reaches far beyond our normal ways of thinking.

And that IT will be revealed this Friday, May 30th.

The person behind "IT" is Dr. Joe Vitale.

We have learned that something profound happened to him on a Sunday afternoon recently shortly after he left his house and went for a walk.

We've also learned that this "IT", as he is referring to it for now, has made a dramatic impact on him and the few people he's shared his story with.

And Dr. Vitale has proof that IT exists.

In an email, Joe mentioned that he snapped two photos - photos that he will be sharing with the world on May 30th.

We hope to find out additional information for you before Friday - so stay tuned.

Whatever this is - it's big enough for him to put his entire reputation on the line.

All I know is IT is all going down at:

What is it?

To Your Success,

Paul Simister

PS:  There's a couple of hints posted at this page, but I don't think any of us are going to guess from that!

Circles...

& Flowers?

HUH??

What is it?

First Hypnotic Marketing Email Review and Comments

This is clearly a curiosity play designed to make you want to know more.

What is it that makes a man as famous and successful as Joe Vitale prepared to "put his entire reputation on the line".

What is it that has had a dramatic effect on him and the people he has shared the idea with?

I didn't know but for me personally, the email made little impact.

I respect Joe Vitale, I've read his books and subscribed to the Hypnotic Gold newsletter but I don't care about him and this first email failed to excite me and it certainly didn't answer the "what's in it for me" question.

Hypnotic Marketing Email 2 - ABC News I Told You IT was Big

Since we sent the email yesterday about what Dr. Joe Vitale will be revealing this Friday, May 30th, we've been slammed by emails, support tickets, and calls from people trying to guess what "IT" is.

As you can imagine, we have been doing everything we can to obtain more information from one of our contacts who does know the full story of what is going on here.

Most of the updates are found on:

What is IT?

However, we did learn an additional piece of information that we have been told must not be published onto any website [update - this is now on the Hypnotic Marketing website].

So we decided to share this new information with you, right here... right now... in this email.

It seems that Joe is not the only person behind "IT" like we had previously thought.

We have been told that Joe has been referring to a "Miss W" a lot lately.  The story is that after Joe snapped the photos, he went back into his house and searched the Internet for hours for someone that he could talk to about IT".

The search led him to a "Miss W".  Our contact also mentioned that Miss W. has some sort of connection with ABC News!

We did some research ourselves and may have found something SHOCKING - which would revel what "IT" is before Joe does on Friday.

We may be onto something here, and we hope that we'll find out the answer to a question we asked our contact earlier today.

If we are right, Dr. Joe Vitale could become the most well-known name in the entire world within the next 72 hours.

We're not kidding here.

And if we are right... we hope that Joe has moved to a secure location outside of Texas.

There would be so many news crews... so many cameras.... helicopters...

man, oh man...

Look - if you haven't already, make sure that you stay up to date on what is happening here.

What is IT?

If we are right about our assumption, we could possibly expose everything (even before Joe does on Friday) to you and everyone else on the Hypnotic Marketing update list. 

So make sure you're on there.

Stay tuned.  This could get very interesting.

To Your Success,

Paul Simister

Second Hypnotic Email Review & Comments

This email starts with an appeal to your instinct to rely on social proof.

If other people are interested and think it is good, it must be good.

It's why you can stand in the middle of a city and start looking up at the top of a building and other people will join you to see what is so interesting. A sizable crowd can build up quite quickly.

It's why if you are in a strange city and you need dinner and the first restaurant has only one table occupied and the next one looks three quarters full, you will invariably choose the popular restaurant.

It then continues to build on the curiosity theme.

We still still don't know what IT is and now we have the mysterious Miss W to consider.

Unfortunately the email still didn't arouse my curiosity and I didn't have any interest to discover more about IT or Miss W despite the fact that I am an Hypnotic Marketing affiliate.

It was working on some people though.

Although I wasn't doing anything I was hearing the "cha-ching" as my affiliate commissions started rolling in for people who I had introduced to Hypnotic Marketing and Nitro Marketing in the past.

Now this did start piquing my curiosity and made me think how great affiliate marketing si when you get paid and you haven't done anything at all.

So far I have earned a three figure income from sales of Hypnotic Marketing 2.0 and until this today when I received email 4, bought and started writing this blog posting, I had not done a thing.

I love affiliate marketing when it is this easy.

Hypnotic Marketing Email 3 - New Bonus Added To Hypnotic Marketing 2.0!

I'm sure by now you've heard about the tremendous reception that Dr. Joe Vitale has received from the marketing community on his latest best-selling product: Hypnotic Marketing 2.0

And with good reason - this has single handedly turned the "Web 2.0" movement on it's ear by...

Well, let me start back at the beginning:

The launch of the new Hypnotic Marketing 2.0 marks the first significant change to Dr. Joe Vitale's original Hypnotic Marketing Formula in 9 years.  For almost a decade, Hypnotic Marketing has been a proven and successful 3-step marketing formula that thousands of marketers use to explode their business and bank accounts.

However, after a "big idea" landed in Dr. Vitale's mind during an afternoon walk, he realized that Social Media Marketing now presents the largest marketing opportunity to hit the Internet in years.

And Dr. Vitale is no stranger to Social Media Marketing success.  He saw the raw power first-hand of what Social Media can do to drive traffic to his website when over 20,000 unique visitors poured into his website after one small Social Media promotion.

Because Dr. Vitale recognized the marketing opportunities that Social Media Marketing presents, for the first time ever, he has added a new fourth step to the Hypnotic Marketing Formula.

Hypnotic Marketing 2.0 now combines the proven Hypnotic Marketing Formula with the powerful marketing opportunities that Social Media Marketing presents.

Discover Hypnotic Marketing 2.0

Yes, the instant feedback on Dr. Joe Vitale's new Hypnotic Marketing 2.0 has been incredible (he's smashed many sales records)

And today, we are making a huge announcement which also addresses one of the questions we
received:

"I love the new hypnotic marketing product, and I am trying to find more ways I can make my blogs more "hypnotic".  Do you happen to have any suggestions?"  -- M.P.

Yes - we do!

Because we want to make sure that you have the best of the best when it comes to Social Media Hypnotic Marketing, we asked Dr. Vitale if he could provide some additional information on 'Hypnotic' Blogging.

We were expecting a page or two that we could provide everyone, but were blown away at what we just received....

Dr. Vitale wants to "give back" to those of you who took advantage of the special offer found on:

Discover Hypnotic Marketing 2.0

So for those of you who have already ordered, and for a limited time, also for those who are going to place their order right now for Hypnotic Marketing 2.0, there is a brand new limited time bonus...

Hypnotic Marketing 2.0 now includes Dr. Vitale's exclusive full Hypnotic Blogging product - at no additional cost!

Hypnotic Blogging is packed with information and answers questions like:

- What blog makes $40,000 a month after just a year and a half?

- What is a "lifestyle blog"?

- How you can train Google to index your blog daily?

- How do I use "karmic marketing" to get other bloggers to send you tons of traffic?

- What should you do when you're afraid to take action?

Joe interviewed someone who retired at the age of 37 and decided to become a full-time blogger.  This interview ROCKS and will really change the way you think about blogging.

Hypnotic Blogging is now available as an incredible bonus to Hypnotic Marketing 2.0 -- but not for long.

Go to:

Hypnotic Marketing 2.0

To Your Success,

Paul Simister

P.S... Remember, time is running out to save money and secure your copy of Hypnotic marketing 2.0 plus all of the incredible bonuses.  And remember, HM 2.0 now includes "Hypnotic Blogging" as another brand new bonus!  But not for long:

Third Hypnotic Email Review & Comments

Now we are beginning to talk as we are starting to see the "what's in it for me" answered in sufficient detail for me to click over and take a look at Hypnotic Marketing 2.0.

We also have a scarcity play with the introduction of Hypnotic Blogging as an extra bonus for a limited time only. Buy now or lose it forever?

Despite the fact that I am a blogger who certainly likes the idea of making $40,000 per month I clicked but didn't buy.

Fourth Hypnotic Marketing Email - Did Hypnotic Marketing 2.0 Make You Cry? 

Cry?

We hope not.

Buy?

Thousands already have.

The secret?

Emotion.

Throughout the promotion of Hypnotic Marketing 2.0, it was emotion that helped slingshot HM2.0 to the top - becoming Joe's best-selling product ever.

Hidden deep within the emails and sales letter were traces of techniques that Joe teaches in his ebook, "Emotional Selling Tools".

See if you can spot 3 of them:

Hypnotic Marketing 2.0

"Emotional Selling Tools" has been a secret weapon many marketers refer back to often to really get into the heads of their potential customers.

In fact, Joe uncovered 155 different ways to trigger consumers into making an emotional purchase.

155 different ways...

Most websites fail to use just one of these 155...

And when it comes to Social Media Marketing, emotional selling is rarely used.

Very few understand the true power of what emotional selling can do for their business.

In fact, for the last year, even if someone like you wanted to get a hold of "Emotional Selling Tools", it was impossible.

It's been off of the market.

And it's still off the market today.

However, for the first time in more than a year, "Emotional Selling Tools" is now being made available to the public.

But there's one small catch.

You need to own Hypnotic Marketing 2.0.

If you already own Hypnotic Marketing 2.0, be sure to log into your members area and refresh the page.  You'll notice that there is a brand new link to download Joe's book, "Emotional Selling Tools"!

For those of you who have not ordered Hypnotic Marketing 2.0 yet... here's your chance to claim your copy of "Emotional Selling Tools", plus Hypnotic Marketing 2.0, PLUS all of the bonuses.

The "Emotional Selling Tools" book is worth the small investment of Hypnotic Marketing 2.0
alone!

Hypnotic Marketing 2.0


Remember, you'll not only get Hypnotic Marketing 2.0 and all of the bonuses you'll find on:

... but you will also get two unadvertised bonuses:

1. Emotional Selling Tools

2. Hypnotic Blogging

This has become a massive course for Hypnotic Social Media Marketing that most other marketers would charge at least $597 for.

People still can't believe that we haven't raised the price of HM 2.0.

But we're going to VERY soon...

Hurry...  Go to:

Hypnotic Marketing 2.0

To Your Success,

Paul Simister

P.S... By combining everything you'll learn in HM 2.0, Hypnotic Blogging, and Emotional Selling Tools, you will be well on your way to becoming a true social media marketing expert for your business.

Your competitors will have no idea what hit them!  But you'll know....

Hypnotic Marketing 2.0

Review of Hypnotic Marketing Email 4.0

Ok this is the one that got me because it pressed one of my emotional triggers - the desire to know more about emotional triggers.

Ironic really but it worked.

I clicked on the website, shot down to the bottom, saw the low price ($27) and bought

I didn't read the sales copy although I have taken a PDF copy to read at my leisure. In my view it always pays to study great sales copy and I am sure that Joe Vitale has laced the sales letter with all kinds of examples of Hypnotic Marketing and emotional triggers.

Since then I have been busy downloading all the goodies and there really are a lot on offer.

It's too early to say just how good the material is but I wasn't expecting a man of Joe Vitale's stellar reputation to be giving so much for such a low price.

Take a look at Hypnotic Marketing 2.0 for yourself and do yourself a favour. Grab your copy before the price increases and learn how to put the power of emotional marketing to work for yourself.

To Your Success

Your Profit Coach

Paul Simister

Business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs

Mark Joyner - The Great Formula Giveaway - Free PDF

After the early success of giving away a free copy of his best selling book "The Irresistible Offer", Mark Joyner of Simpleology is going one step further and has now announced that he will give away a free copy of the best selling follow up book "The Great Formula".

To gain access to both books for free, you just need to click on the links below and sign up:

The Irresistible Offer

The Great Formula

When I reviewed The Great Formula I had mixed feelings and only gave it 3 Stars - see The Great Formula review to find out why.

It was about a year ago when I read the book and wrote out my thoughts and that was before I had bought into Mark Joyner's special ability for taking complex ideas and making them simple. I suspect that my review would be more generous now.

The message in The Great Formula is essential and the final element forms the sixth pillar of my own Eight Pillars of Business Prosperity model - turning one time buyers into regular customers.

The other big difference is that now I am not considering whether to recommend that you buy it, just read it so the fact that I thought the book was too short now becomes an advantage. It is quick and easy to read and the if you haven't previously grasped the key messages, it will be a revelation.

Get your free copy of The Great Formula - and even more importantly, put the ideas into action and see your sales and profits shoot up like a rocket.

The Ultimate Open Rate™ by Scott Hallman

I am delighted that after a few technical issues I have been having, I can now bring you more of Scott Hallman's Tuesday Profit Tips™ on my blog. Scott is one of the Business Development Superstars who I pay most attention to and it is an honour to have his permission to re-publish his Tuesday Profit Tips™

The Ultimate Open Rate™

How To SYSTEMATICALLY Increase
Your Internet Driven Sales by 20-40% of the Same Exact Leads You Have Now

Listen To Scott Hallman

A Lesson From Victoria's Secret®

Hi, this is Scott Hallman and welcome to this week's Tuesday Profit Tip™ on The Ultimate Open Rate™. What the heck is this? Let me explain because it can easily add 20% or more to your sales conversion rate.

In working with so many clients that are now utilizing the Internet to generate sales from their (and Strategic Partner's) list, what I find is that they are "singularly" focused on using the Internet exclusively to convert these leads to sales …and this guarantees that they will miss out on 20-40% of the potential revenue potential from these same prospects.

Let use a typical scenario to illustrate how most entrepreneurs market to their prospects. In this case we will profile ABC Retail Company. Here is the process:

• An email lead is received in response to someone visiting their website - perhaps to sign up for a newsletter or get a free gift or a trial offer of some kind.
   
• They build a list of these "leads".
   
• They then either send this list periodic emails or use an autoresponder system to send out a series of emails to try to convert the prospect into a purchaser.
   
• If they are more progressive, they send them drip via email forever or until they opt out. The end result is a certain "conversion rate" from leads to sales. In Figure 1 we assumed that 10% actually opened the email to see the offer and of those 2% purchased the $1,000 item.

ABC Retail               Figure 1

Mktg. Method	List Size	*Email Open Rate	% That Buy	Sales	Avg. Sale $$	Revenue
Email #1	5,000	10.0%	2.0%	10	$1000	$10,000

Hey, sounds pretty good!

But We Know That Repetition Produces Results

What if many people on my list did not see the first email? No worries. ABC is a smart online marketer and so they send several emails to promote each product they launch so that they maximize the number of people that see or hear their offer.

Because of this, they tripled the number of people that on their list that actually see and open the email to learn about their incredible offer (see in Figure 2). And this tripled their revenue!

Any many entrepreneurs do this follow up routinely. So we will call the $30,000 in revenue the "baseline revenue" for which The Ultimate Open Rate is challenged to improve.

ABC Retail               Figure 2

Mktg. Method	List Size	*Email Open Rate	% That Buy	Sales	Avg. Sale $$	Revenue
Email #1	5,000	10.0%	2.0%	10	$1000	$10,000
Email 1-10	5,000	20%	2.0%	20	$1,000	$20,000

Again, pretty good...but far from The Ultimate.

If You Rely Exclusively on Email to Convert Internet Leads You Are Literally Leaving 10's or Even 100's of Thousands of Dollars of Profit on the Table.

One big mistake so many business owners make is to assume that all prospects respond to the same medium in which they originally used to reach them.

Victoria's Secret® understands this pretty well. Let me use a personal example to illustrate …no not me…it is about my wife. She has placed orders from Victoria's Secret website. So, like a good marketer, they put her on their list and start regularly mailing her. But my wife never opens those emails because she prefers to browse the physical catalog until she sees some clothes she likes for her or my daughters.

Victoria's Secret mails a catalog, via snail mail, or a regular basis. In order words, they use more than just email to reach their prospects and customers. And since they have been doing this for years and send tons of these catalogs out, my guess is it is pretty lucrative, to say the least.

Victoria's Secret System is Good…But it is Still Not The Ultimate

The Ultimate Open Rate™ refers to the total number of prospects that ever see (or hear) your message. It is obvious that if they never see it, they will never buy, right? So the goal is to achieve the Ultimate Open Rate, which is getting the most people to see or hear your message and offer...make sense?

In the ABC example above they have likely exhausted the number of people on their list that will open and see their emails on this particular campaign. In their case, this is 30% of the list or 1,500 people. But what about the other 70% or 3,500 people that never have seen or heard the offer yet?

Well, many may be uninterested based on the subject line and therefore never buy, even if they did read the email or web page. But a bunch of these 3,500 will be interested. It is just that they never read the email due to email overload or it going into junk mail.

They Will Buy If Given Half a Chance

If you can reach the remaining people with your message and offer, can you convert them at a similar rate to the people that read the email or web page?

YES! You say but even if I sent several other emails they may not see them and I will annoy the rest of my list!

I agree. So this takes us to Step 2 of the Ultimate Open Rate Formula, reaching them with a 2nd form of marketing. We will use a phone call for this example.

Since 1,500 have opened your emails, you only need to call the 3,500 that have not opened at least one email. So the cost is relatively small (we will assume they are consumers and therefore we can call them with a broadcast system at a cost of $.05 each).

Let's assume that you were able to get 10% of the 3,500 potentially interested people to either call you or visit your web page, after making 2 calls to them. And that 2% of them purchased. That would generate an increase of $7,000 or 35% in revenue (See Figure 3)

 

ABC Retail               Figure 3

Mktg. Method	List Size	Open Rate	# Opened	Total Opened	Total Open Rate*	% That Buy	# of Sales	Avg. Sale $$	Revenue
Email 1	5,000	10%	500	500	10.0%	2.0%	10	$1,000	$10,000
Email 2-10	5,000	10%	500	1,000	20.0%	2.0%	20	$1,000	$20,000
Calls 1-2	3,500	10%	350	1,350	27.0%	2.0%	27	$1,000	$27,000

* Of the 5,000 on the total list

That's a 35% Increase in Revenue!

By using just one other form of communication to reach the prospects with their message, ABC was able to scientifically increase sales by 35%.

If we continued with this example, using other forms of communication, we could likely increase the baseline revenue results by another 10% or more (and with little risk if you use the scientific testing we teach you which will eliminate the risk before chunking down this money).

As with last week's topic, for most of you this simple process can produce $10,000-$100,000 a year in added profit. So go for it and ProfitNOW™.

To your Success,

Scott Hallman

PS If you are a member or are interested in accessing the step by step process for fully implementing this and other business growth strategies, go to the Small Business Growth Club. (Everything you need to Build-Grow-Manage-Profit from your business for less than $1 a day!)

Thanks Scott. This is a great tip and builds on two important issues:

1. Measuring the effects of your marketing - when you measure, you can test and see what makes sense economically and what doesn't.
    
2. Using multiple sources of lead generation and conversion. Jay Abraham recommends that you build a Power Parthenon of different marketing techniques to escape the dependency created by relying on just one main method. Jay Conrad Levinson (Guerrilla Marketing) has identified over 200 marketing weapons which you could use.

Nightingale Conant, the audio learning company is another example of a business which combines regular email campaigns with a direct mail operation. As always look at the way large and successful companies market to you as a potential buyer. If they do something regularly, you can be sure that it works and if it works for them, then you may be able to adapt the idea for your business.

I have said to Scott that I will be writing a series of reviews on his Small Business Growth Club but to give you a quick taster, it is exactly the type of membership account I would like to create myself but Scott a) got there first, b) secured a great name and c) as well as Scott's own great ideas he persuaded Chet Holmes to share many of his business building lessons as well.

If you like what Scott has written, I do recommend that you click over to his Small Business Growth Club, have a quick look at all the items on the home page and then click on the link that says "Click here to get started" which will take you into the sales letter explanation of the club.

Your Profit Coach

Paul Simister

Business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs

Online Business Success 7

Rumour has it in the Internet marketing world that May 2008 will be a record month for product launches focused on helping you to achieve online business success.

Now that's good and bad news.

It's good because you can expect lots of high quality free information which is loaded with ideas on how you can increase the success of your online business.

The bad news is that even the free material could lead to information overload, your email inboxes will be full of affiliate mailings (I hate it when they can't be bothered to write anything original) and Internet marketing gurus will be going after your money hard so everything will presented in a very compelling way.

I am intending to adapt my Eight Pillars of Business Prosperity to the world of the Internet to help give you a solid foundation for considering all these programs.

Let's start with a real heavyweight:

StomperNet To Re-open Briefly  Going Natural 3 Videos

I have just finished the StomperNet SMARTS program but that's just a small part of what is on offer through the main StomperNet membership.

This is for serious Internet marketers only (those who do make a lot of money from the Internet or intend to make a lot of money in the future).

See my thoughts about StomperNet Going Natural 3 or jump straight to the first Going Natural 3 video

As always with the StomperNet videos, if you have any interest in Internet marketing, the video is highly recommended although at 53 minutes long it is a substantial time commitment but it will help your understanding of Google Adwords as it explains how to rescue a business when its pages are dropped by Google.
 

Nikki Pilkington 299 Steps To Website Heaven

I continue to serialise Nikki Pilkington's 299 Steps to Website Heaven. Nikki has managed to make the important aspects of search engine optimisation easy to understand and do.

Does case matter in search engine optimisation

External links to your website

Mark Joyner Viral Marketing Crash Course

Mark Joyner was one of the first specialist Internet marketers and created the concept of viral marketing which he continues to practice.

In the Viral Marketing Crash Course you have over 75 minutes of Mark Joyner on video explaining why viral marketing is so effective at creating traffic, how you should put your viral marketing campaign together and then he analyses two siccessful viral marketing websites.

Best of all, the Viral Marketing Crash Course is free, so you may want to jump straight to the Mark Joyner video, but do download, print off and use the learning guide.

An example of a viral marketing campaign is the Ever Profits Toolbar which I still love.

To Your Success

Paul Simister

Your Profit Coach, business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs

© Planning & Control Solutions Ltd 2007-2008 All Rights Reserved

Dan Kennedy Information Marketing Free Teleseminar

A couple of weeks ago I reviewed "The Ultimate Sales Letter" book by Dan Kennedy which is extremely good, but you'd expect nothing less from a world class copywriter. Now I am able to offer you a free downloadable teleseminar from Dan Kennedy and Ron LeGrand - Information Marketing.

This is just the start of the price Dan Kennedy is prepared to pay to get your attention to his new product launch INFO RICHES.

See: INFO RICHES

Why Information Marketing is Important

Information marketing and the knowledge how to do something taps into a number of our basic drives and motivations.

If you have received any management training, you have probably been taught Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs which normally lists five main drives which people have:

1. Biological needs for existence - food, drink etc
    
2. Safety needs
    
3. Affiliation and a sense of belonging
    
4. Self esteem, the desire to feel good about ourselves
    
5. Self actualisation, to be the best we can be

Information marketing can tap into any of these drives e.g. "The Bushman's guide to finding food and water in the Kalahari Desert" or "How To Protect Your Family, House and Valuable Possessions from Fire" but it is mainly the last three that I want to focus on.

Groups naturally divide between those who understand or know how to do something and those who don't. It's happened to me when I've been chatting in a pub about the England football team and the conversation suddenly switches to big ends and carburettors and I immediately felt excluded. I don't want to know about the internal combustion engine and car mechanics but like everyone else, I do want to belong so you can see how information marketing can help.

Along the self esteem drive, it is natural to feel good when you know how to do something and bad when you don't know about something that you admit is important. My lack of mechanical knowledge doesn't bother me in the safety of the UK, but if my Land Rover breaks down in the Kalahari Desert, it suddenly becomes very important. Information marketing teaches you to close these important skill gaps.

Finally on the self actualisation drive, when all the other drives are satisfied, we have a desire to be the best we can be. Good is OK but there is an internal force that says that we can get better. Again information marketing fits neatly into satisfying this drive.

Is there really a market for information?

The Internet is based on people searching for information and we all know how quickly that has grown.

A quick search of the Wordtracker keyword research tool shows 2,269 searches about "how to save a life", 1,361 for "how to write a resume" and 955 on "How to make meatloaf" amongst a list of less savoury topics. To put these numbers into perspective, 423 searched on accountant and 287 for accountants.

Just look at the number of chefs who have written cookery and recipe books and all the other people who have built an expert or guru status based on information.

Two Routes To Profit From Information Marketing

There are two ways for any business to benefit from information marketing:

1. Selling the information product - books, ebooks, CDs, DVDs and training courses. The beauty of this type of information marketing is that you work once and are potentially paid for a lifetime.
    
2. Using the information product as a free lead generation tool. As the size and importance of a purchase increases, people feel a need to understand more before they make the purchase decision. Providing the information and carefully tilting the buying criteria in their favour creates great loyalty with the prospective client.

Opportunities For Information Marketing

As information marketing is driven from the Internet, the "how to make money on the Internet" is very large but very crowded but there are many other niches which have been largely undeveloped.

Any market where people are confused, frustrated or want to know more can be an opportunity.

Another opportunity is catering to the hobbyist market. It is expensive to print and market magazines but cheaper to create a niche subscription based website. with one fixed cost, any profit increases rapidly with every extra paying subscriber.

Dan Kennedy & Information Marketing

Below is the first Info Riches promotion email (always interesting to see how the experts do it and I believe that you can learn a lot)

Information Marketing is a 90-minute audio course between Dan Kennedy ("the guru's guru", "the millionaire maker", "the grandfather of information marketing") and one of his $20 million + earner students, Ron LeGrand.

In case you're 1 of the 7 people in the world who don't know Dan Kennedy... he's the expert that A LONG LIST of established entrepreneurs have studied from.

Billion dollar companies pay Dan for his advice because, with a 25-year success track record, his tips/strategies produce wealth.

This is one of those audios you NEED TO add to your Audio University folder on your computer (ie: save it for future reference) and certainly add it to your IPod.

On top of that, you can also grab a copy of the $297 "Masters of Marketing" 12-CD audio program which is presented by Ted Nicholas, Robert Allen, Dan Kennedy, T. Harv Eker and others.

That's the entire 12-disc program! Retails for $297. You can grab it for free.

While you're there...

You'll find a video on this same page with Carl Galletti introducing a $5000+ contest.

Carl Galletti has been hired by Gary Halbert and Jay Abraham... he's THAT good.

By the way:

If none of these names mean anything to you, you REALLY need to turn off the TV and grab a book because I'm listing off all-star hall-of-fame captains of industry ... the ones who don't just sell "how to" info but have literally produced millions in personal wealth over and over again (and are more than qualified to give advice on the subject).

Don't be shy...

Grab your freebies...

(You can thank me later).

INFO RICHES

But what is INFO RICHES?

Here is a video which explains more

To Your Success

Paul Simister

Your Profit Coach, business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs

© Planning & Control Solutions Ltd 2007-2008 All Rights Reserved

Online Business Success 5

This week's news for online business success starts with tips on how you can improve your search engine optimisation.

Nikki Pilkington "299 Steps To Website Heaven"

Nikki, one of the UK's leading SEO experts has given me permission to feature tips from her book, "299 Steps To Website Heaven" on my Online Profits blog so you will now have the chance to read one or two of Nikki's tips per week (but I recommend that you just buy the book).

It starts with Using Title Tags to best effect

So simple but I see this opportunity missed so often. Don't get this right and it's the equivalent of trying to do the high jump while carrying a 50kg bag of cement.

To Your Success

Paul Simister

Your Profit Coach, business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs

© Planning & Control Solutions Ltd 2007-2008 All Rights Reserved

Guerrilla Marketing On The Internet

The last Guerrilla Marketing Association call featuring Jay Conrad Levinson was "The Truth of Guerrilla Marketing on the Internet" and it was fascinating to hear Jay explain how Guerrilla Marketers can take advantage of the Internet.

Here are a few points that struck home to me although the entire call was packed with high quality content.

First of all to succeed in Internet marketing you must understand the basic marketing principles. Obvious I know when you think about it but I see too many people go along to a website designer and have an attractive website designed but with no consideration to the marketing message and how to monetarise it.

The second item from the call which made me stand back and reflect was when Jay Conrad Levinson said that you don't need a website to market on the Internet.

Now that's an interesting idea isn't it. Doing away with the expensive website that nobody finds and instead concentrating on

1. Marketing to existing customers and leads by email
    
2. Using social networking sites like Facebook and business networking sites like Ecademy
    
3. Article marketing and the content sharing sites like Squidoo and Hubpages
    
4. Having a blog (which is like having your own website) or just becoming a regular commentator on other blogs and making enough of an impression so that people want to follow you
    
5. Using bulletin boards and forums
    
6. Selling on Internet auction sites like eBay

It may not be the best strategy long term but it is difficult to create an effective presence on the Internet and it will become even more difficult.

Just as in magazine advertising, the more clutter there is, the less individual items are noticed. Having a website is only the answer if you are attracting traffic.

But there is a credibility issue.

Often prospective customers will encounter you through another marketing channel and then take a look at your website. The beauty of the Internet is that it is anonymous and you can find out more without having to reveal your interest.

In cases where prospective customers expect you to have a website, then you do need one because otherwise your credibility will be in doubt.

The final idea that I am going to write about from this Guerrilla Marketing Association call is the rule of thirds.

Jay Conrad Levinson is only two aware of what happens with websites and his advice is to split your budget into thirds and spend the first third of developing the website, the second third on promoting it so that prospective customers either know about and look for it or can find it and the final third on maintaining the website.

This last point is important. How often have you visited a website and immediately realised that the website is badly out of date, perhaps promoting an event that happened nine months ago. It immediately creates an impression but not one that you want.

Remember everything a Guerrilla Marketer does is intentional.

If you have a small business and you want to improve your marketing, I strongly recommend the Guerrilla Marketing Association. It is a subscription service but you get a free trial period. The membership website is packed with resources to help you and I believe that the price is a bargain.

To Your Success

Paul Simister

Your Profit Coach, business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs

© Planning & Control Solutions Ltd 2008 All Rights Reserved

Business Book Reviews 1

My new Business Books blog has been active in the first week with a combination of book reviews and book summary reviews.

Book Reviews

The Ultimate Sales Letter Dan Kennedy - 4.5 Stars

I review my well thumbed guide to copywriting by non nonsense copywriter Dan Kennedy.

Instant Team Building Bradley Sugars - 3 Stars

I plucked up courage to read another of Brad's Sugars books and this time it does have some good points but not enough to recommend it as a buy.

Ebooks

The Secrets Of Getting Your Bank Manager To Say Yes by Rob Warlow - 4.5 Stars

Excellent guide to convincing your bank manager to give you a loan.

Book Summaries

Success In Small Business Is A Laughing Matter Phil Johnson

Business advice with humour.

Creative Marketing Communications

Compendium of articles from the big creative agencies ran into my scepticism of brand advertising.

How To Close Every Sale Joe Girard

Hard nosed sales book from the Guinness Book of Records top salesman. Not for the squeamish who prefer consultative selling but ideal for those people tired of being walked over by prospects.

New Leaders Wanted Now Hiring Leandro Herrero

Thought-provoking and unusual book about leadership

Built To Last Jim Collins & Jerry Porras

Other people love it but I can't see what the fuss is about.

Articles

Michael Porter Five Forces Update

Latest Harvard Business Review article updates the classic with recent examples but the basic theory stays untouched.

Free Ebooks

Download these free ebooks while you have the chance as I intend to refresh the contents regularly.

Internet Marketers Guide To FREE Traffic, Sales and Profit by Raam Anand

Making A Living Off Your Blog by Terry Jett

AdSense Income Blueprint by Kurt Chrisler

To Your Success

Paul Simister

Your Profit Coach, business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs

© Planning & Control Solutions Ltd 2007-2008 All Rights Reserved