6 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}
6 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}

You know more than you think!!!!

by harrydog
5 replies
Hi everyone
I thought I would put something up that would hopefully inspire you to reach greater heights if you feel you are struggling with Internet Marketing.

I have been involved with IM for nearly two years now and to be honest I struggled for a long time. I used to lie awake at night beating myself up.

Why was I failing when I see on a daily basis people claiming to make $1000's a month?
:confused:Why was I spending a fortune on products that I could never get to work?
:rolleyes:Why was I deluding myself and my family that I was going to make it?
Why did I start to stop talking about it to my friends as they all though I was nuts to keep going?

I started following just a couple of very successful marketers. I watched exactly what they were doing. I documented their strategies and tried to reverse engineer their campaigns. What I found amazed me, they all did virtually the same things just in slightly different ways. What they were doing was contrary to most other marketers - they gave stuff away. Not crap either they gave away quality products and information. Now this model gave me a huge problem. What they hell was I going to give away. I had never created my own product so where did I start.
The first thing I did was attend a seminar in Manchester England held by Lee Mcintrye. I paid good money (more on my credit card!!) but it was worth every penny. Not only did I learn a lot but I met other people who were in exactly the same position as me - spinning their wheels with very little success/income. In a weird way this made me feel a whole lot better. It wasn't just me, I wasn't a looser and I could actually make it if I applied myself.

So why the post title " You know more than you think"

Well after attending this seminar I changed my whole approach. I did a lot of networking at the time and I was meeting a lot of small business people and a common thread when I was talking to them was that they were struggling to market on the Internet. They didn't really understand the landscape, they didn't have the time to do it themselves and some of them had already been ripped off by unscrupulous companies who promised the earth. You know the ones "We will guarantee you No1 spot on Google if you pays us X £1000 per month"
I then offered one company to set up a PPC campaign for them for Free and I would charge them a % of the business that the campaign created. Lead generation for small businesses is huge, they are all looking for new customers. This then grew into looking at a whole marketing campaign. I was then introduced to their web design company. I had one meeting with them and explained a complete marketing campaign including
Article marketing
Squidoo lenses
Hub pages
Blogging
Blogg Commenting
SEO
Link wheels
Face book advertising
Social bookmarking
E mail marketing
Creating lists and news letters

In fact the whole shabang.
The web design company were amazed. At the end of the meeting the MD asked "How the hell do you know all that, we didn't know any of it all we do is PPC and SEO (not very well)"

The outcome of all this is I have now secured a contract for $3000 per month with a 5% commission on any business that comes in. With their average sale being $400+ then my commission on each sale is $20 which doesn't sound much but our realistic target now is 1000+ customers per month that will make me $20,000+ per month. The market they are in has nothing to do what so ever with Internet Marketing and IM is purely the conduit for producing new clients.

All this has come about by me learning the processes of Internet Marketing and applying them to offline business.

Remember YOU know more than 99% of people out there about Internet Marketing. Don't beat yourself up if you are struggling - apply what you know to the off line Business world. There are small businesses out there that are crying out for your services. Think about doing some work for free. Once you can show them you can get results then your onto a winner.

I will starting this new customers project in the next few weeks and I will share my strategies, successes and failures so you can see what I am doing.

I hope this has re affirmed your desire to succeed. Start talking to your local business community and offer your services and someone will take you up on it.

happy marketing
Mark Jackson
  • Profile picture of the author wjtyoung
    Excellent stuff Mark, thanks for sharing.

    It is easy to get discouraged, and many give up right before they start making it. I remember putting up my first web site around ten years ago and I had no clue about anything. If I remember it took me something like 18 months to start making anything. I finally found a few people who knew what they were doing and learned as much as I could from them.

    The other thing you mentioned that is huge and often overlooked is using what you know about IM and applying it to offline businesses. Huge huge market.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[1999777].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author DogScout
    And pretty much non-competitive as most 'SEO' companies hire someone with a degree in marketing in 2002 and has never spent a penny on continuing education since. How effective will their on-line work be? (Though granted much of the off line stuff remains the same. Some of the best direct marketers that ever lived have been dead for a long time now.)
    Signature
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[1999816].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Andyhenry
    Thanks for sharing Mark,

    I would add though that it's not as easy for some people - you have the ability and confidence and can obviously show value - not everyone can do that.

    I also work with lots of offline businesses and I hear a LOT of stories from them about internet marketers that come to them with stories of using web2.0 to help them but can't deliver.

    Knowing about these things and being able to deliver for businesses are 2 different things.

    In reality - many IMers who think they know enough to help businesses are thinking that because they've been told it by other IMers and in fact they haven't been able to do it for themselves and just want an easy answer to how their knowledge can make them money.

    But if you talk a good game and don't deliver (most IMers) - these businesses will not react kindly.
    Signature

    nothing to see here.

    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[1999818].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author DogScout
    Actually, if you cannot raise their monthly gross revenues 20-40% without 'web2.0' you have no business doing offline marketing anyway.
    70+% of improving a client's net is customer base and current traffic orientated. No sense increasing traffic if they are not currently maximizing the income from their current clients/traffic. Do that and you just are giving them more to screw up.
    Signature
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[1999842].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author harrydog
      Andy
      you are spot on. Most people that try to approach small business people and go about it all the wrong way.
      Having been in sales and marketing in the offline world for many years, most SEO companies are pretty clueless and promise things they can't deliver and just churn customers with cold calling and promising the earth.
      With regards to actually working for small businesses they are not really intererested in what methods are used, all that matters is can we increase either leads into the business or actual sales. If you can show this then you can charge a decent fee and commissions based on performance.
      People need to think about the bottom line for potential customers and not try to push all the fancy bells and whistles of how you are actually going to do it.
      Do your research first, who are their competitors, what are there competitors doing with regards to IM, create a report on their current state of IM. i.e. whats their ranking for keywords, how many links have they got, etc etc and then position the proposition around these facts and show a growth plan - not a wizzy IM plan (do have all the answers though)

      Thats my two pennies worth - think like a business man and not an Internet marketer. IM is just a rout to leads and sales.

      Mark Jackson
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[2005623].message }}

Trending Topics