The Catastrophe Most Businesses Face When They Omit This Phase Of Operation

Every year I get to work with a few individuals who want to get started in Internet marketing. They them tell me about the ideas they want to pursue, how much they want to make and how quickly they will make it.

A few of the clients I work with have already started their business and come to me when they feel that things aren’t working. The first thing I do is ask them to show me their business plan. I really can’t work with a business if they don’t have a written plan. The reason is simple; if they can’t show me a written outline of their goals, chances are they don’t have a clue where they are in the process.

Many times, the solution to their problem is simply to get back to basics. That means starting with the preparation phase. The prep phase allows you to explore the market and identify the specific business model that gives you the greatest profit at a competitive rate.

During the Prep Phase, you get to study your market, craft the ideal business model for your company using the many profiles available to your profile. The best way to start the prep phase is to go to Google, Yahoo and Alexa among others. The reason you want to explore those sites, is because you can see the variety of websites and approaches that they take to market and sell their products.

You should make use of Google trends to examine the trend lines of your market. What you are looking for when you use these tools is the specific use of your product, how many people are using the product and in what way are they using it.
Set up a bookmarks folder that holds your research sites. You’ll be visiting them often. Here are a few of my favorite among my many research links:
• Google – use this site for checking the number of searches for a given keyword, the number of paid ads connected to a keyword and even more.
• Wikipedia – I use this site to get a handle on the history of a market or product. There are also interesting tidbits of knowledge associated to a product or service or the people attracted to them.
• Mapquest – I use this map website along with Google earth to look for geographic trends as well as similarities among target groups.
• Answers – This site covers a wide range of topics and like wikipedia, gives fairly good information on everything from apples to zebras.
• CIA The World Factbook – The government resource for worldwide information. It is updated regularly. Learn why Moldova might be a key country to look to as a future place of business.
• Keyword discovery – This site offers a comprehensive view of keywords and though it’s a pay site, is invaluable for the professional Internet marketer.
• Spyfu – Peek under the hood of your competition website to see what keywords they use to stay at the top of the search engines. Take a look at their pay per click word choices and much more. Another pay site with a free trial option.
• Google Trends – This is a must for every business owner. Whether you make your money on or off the web Google trends allows you to take a look at what’s trendy what’s popular and where the trends are most popular.
• Alexa – See where your website and other sites rank in popularity on the Internet. Use their “Wayback Machine” to see how websites have changed over time.
• NNDB – I use this site for getting information on people in the news and in history. There are lots of useful information on people and their role in society.
• Technorati – I use this site to check the popularity of blogs and the various industries they cover. Use it to check the popularity of your product.
• Clickbank and several other affiliate websites. Look at what is selling and what is not. Check out the squeezes pages of the sellers.

There are more on my list but this is a start. They will help you to see the big picture of your overall market. Take your time to ensure that you’ve got a clear snapshot of the various permutations of the market for your product. This is vital.

This is where the majority of new Internet business startups end. They spend years fooling themselves that they need just one more idea.

You need to study the market and decide which direction you wish to take. For instance suppose you are interested in selling an information product in health market? You should take the time to see if people are looking online for your intended product. Be absolutely sure that people are buying a similar product form someone else in large enough quantities to justify a business model.

Check to see if the product is on the way in or on the way out. Trends are very important; keep your eyes open. There will be a lot of temptation to skip over some steps or innovate as you go. You need to keep the numbers in front of your vision as you develop your plan. If you need more help contact me and I’ll get you more information on preparation.

Why You Absolutely Must Have An Information Product Regardless Of Your Business Model.

Let's say you run a Chiropractic office and you've been in the profession for a number of years, you've built up a certain amount of expertise. There are things you know about the practice of chiropractic medicine and running a practice effectively that can fill a book. Regardless of your profession you can create an information product. You don’t have to be a writer.

Why is this important? Because other people are interested in what you know. Patients and prospective patients find value in learning about the subject from an insider's perspective. The material can be instructional and informative. Your image as an expert in your field goes up one thousand percent after publication. Last but not least, you can actually sell your knowledge and make money doing it.

Business owners in the service industries have a more difficult time with prospects because they tend to sell an intangible. How effective would it be if someone who services chimneys produces a how-to booklet on the dangers of chimney asphyxiation? What about a carpet cleaner who produces a booklet on the top ten things to look out for in maintaining a healthy home environment?

When you can take your knowledge and produce a beneficial information product, you will elevate your status to a level of trust and esteem that borders on public relations. When you do have a new information product you can create a press release to announce your new product. Contact your local newspapers and get the word out. If you have a client list, you can contact them to let them know you have a free offer for them if they will refer your business to others.

My clients always ask “How can I produce an information product if I don't know how to write?” My answer to you and others is if you know to talk, you know how to write. You don't have to do the work of the final creation; you just have to produce the content. The material can be edited by a professional editor and crafted into a marketable product. Once you have the original material give it to someone who knows what they're doing. Don't be proud; be rich.

You can sell the book or information product on your premises or online at your website. There are infinite ways to promote your products but my recommendation is to limit your promotions to no more than five ways.

Choose a format for your information.
Once you've gotten the ideas down and edited, you can start by marketing the product as an e-book. Based on the response of the e-book, you can take the information product to any number of other upgraded product lines. You can create:
 Hard cover or paper back print on demand books
 Audio books
 Instructional Video series
 Internet and Local Seminars
 Workshops
 Newsletter subscriptions
 Membership sites

So what does it take to make an information product? Think of your information product as an interview or seminar. You can identify a problem or situation in your area of expertise and come up with an organized series of steps or answers to the problem. Once you layout the foundation of your speech, you now have chapters to your information product. The first step is usually the hardest. Once you get started you can get help from professional writers and editors. The benefits of an information product are too important to ignore. If you need help in developing a product, drop me an email and I’ll be glad to assist you in any way that I can.

Winning Steps To Building An Effective, Profitable Website

Have you determined the main purpose of the website? The end result of your website defines your plan for creating one in the first place. Once you come up with a plan, you'll need to evaluate it based on your final objective. Are you looking to sell something? Are you going to promote something or is it a vanity website?

Will you hire someone to design and build it or will you have to learn how to build it yourself?
If you're creating a profit centered website, you'll need to pay close attention of the market which you would be pursuing.

When creating your website, segment the site into appropriate divisions. Start with your written plan then break the plan down into logical segments. Make a link page tree that will determine your navigation system. Next, begin to create your sketch of the navigation system. Decide what the viewer will see first and what you want them to do at each step.

We are planning the website around the content. The main reason you're building is website is for the people who will visit it and so we are taking control of the message and its delivery from the start.

Your content will determine the navigation style. Your market will determine your content. Your marketing will determine your market. Your purpose will determine your marketing.

Now that we determine the focus of your website, we'll go for the look and feel. The biggest piece of advice I'll give you here is to design your website to the expectations of your audience.

Three must have sections that you need to include in your website if you are going commercial are Contact Us
FAQ
Landing pages
The Contact Us page is no longer just a link to your email address. Take advantage of the readers who go to your contact page. They can even sign up for your newsletter or fill out a survey.
Your FAQ page. Use this page to gather more information from those seeking information from your website.
Landing pages are created solely for the purpose of test marketing your web presence. It is used to either sell a product to a specific target market, generate contact information for the company, generating targeted traffic that can be tracked through a web interface. Learn as much as you can about the practice of using landing pages if you're building a commercial website. These pages are essential if you're using Pay Per Click advertising.
Your website will need to be upgraded from time to time. Remember to include that service in your plan. If you had a complex flash website built by someone, be sure to ask for the native files on a CD for future upgrades and or adjustments. You never know where your web designer will be in the future.
Keep your website Search Engine friendly and create a comprehensive plan to promote it regularly. Doing these thing won't guarantee your success, they will help to get you on the right track.

The brand new podcast is now available.

After three months of trying to get my act together, i finally got the podcast for Double My Revenues up and running. The major problem was just finding the time to put the pieces together, schedule the interviews and still work on the Core Training program.

I started this project back in September when I wanted to move away from building websites for clients and do more coaching. There were a few hurdles to overcome when changing the business model in mid-stream. You have to tell the people who rely on you for work that there was good news and bad news. The good news was that I was going to ease up on my nit-picking and finicky habits when it came to their work; the bad news was that they were not going to get as much volume out of me as the once did.

The podcast is now available on I-Tunes and also available on the DoubleMyRevenues.com website. The first interview is with a noted business coach by the name of Robert Hartung; the author of "Beating The Time Bandits". Check it out when you have some time on your hands.

I love business, I had my first venture when I was 14. I printed and sold T-shirts. Sales and sales strategy made me happy. Now that I'm 51, I don't travel as much and my priorities have shifted. I still love the game but from a different perspective. The podcast and the membership site for small business success will take a lot of my time.
I'm sure that it's better to hang out at home and see my boys come home from school, knowing that I can take care of them, than it is to come home at bedtime to say good night,then leave at breakfast time again.
Here's a link to the podcast if you want to enjoy a few short missives from a reformed work-a-holic http://www.didpublishing.com/podcast/DMR-Podcast0.xml

Are you generating leads from your web presence yet?

Are you generating leads from your web presence yet?

I've found that some business owners with the best of intentions place a website or online listing on the Internet and then only remember that it's there when the time comes to pay the bill.

This isn't a slam on business owners; I'm pointing to a situation you might or might not be in right now.
The Internet is still an evolving medium. Some read it like a magazine, others watch it like Television. Still others listen to it like radio. It's kind of hard to keep up with the trends when you've got a business to run.

Ever flirted with the idea of direct mail? Maybe you gave it a try but found it too expensive and didn't get the return that you expected?

You've worked hard to get where you are and probably have developed a great base of clients to keep you busy. That's great, let me ask you a simple question, when was the last time you doubled your annual revenues? For most businesses in your field that was around year two or year three.

It seems pretty crazy to think about doubling your revenues when you seem to be working more hours than you want to already, doesn't it? For most business owners, the thought of that kind of increase usually means adding another round of sleepless nights to make it happen.

What if we could use the power of targeted direct mail with the speed and efficiency of the Internet to help you double your business income? What if we could set it up to work in the background so that you only think about it when the time comes to make the deposits?

The secret to the strategy is in the list you develop. Who would you rather work with, someone who is convinced that you can help them overcome their problems, or someone that you have to convince after spending time and money, that you can help them?

The goal then is to find the people who are easy to work with and who really want to get help and can afford to be helped by you. That means offering something to the general target audience that will separate the ones who are already interested enough in your offer to take action. Those are usually the 30% of the market who are qualified to do something about their problem now.

Your next step is to collect the information of these prospective clients and begin to help them through the process of working with your product or service. Take them through the steps of becoming your valued clients.

You can create a simple turn-key system for lead generation by creating special pages on your website that prospective clients can sign on, to receive their free offer. The free offer then leads to a steady stream of the information to the prospects that contains sales offers with a regular call to action.

You can then develop your list to find out what they really want, get referrals from your list as well as test new products and services through your list.

The very best way to keep the list fresh and keep the list growing is to send out a weekly email newsletter. Perhaps a few tips on the subject of interest to your prospects. You can include an offer at the bottom as the sponsor of your email tips of the week.

Here's a trick that can double your list in 30 days. Send out an email to your list letting them know of a special offer for those who will refer three friends to a special sign-up form. Include a special form for those persons to send an email with the standard information about your subscription to their three friends email addresses. Once the special form is filled out and submitted, your subscriber will be sent to a special page to receive their online gift.

If only 25% of your list responds to your offer, you've significantly increased your list overnight. You may want to try this at selected intervals throughout the year.

Imagine that you've taken the time to invest in a list and after awhile, you've accumulated a following of say, 8,000 or 9,000 emails. Let's say that you wanted to test market a new product or service; how easy would it be to send out a survey to your list and get a response?

That's the power of a great list.

A Plan To Create An Online Empire

A Plan To Create An Online Empire
We had to create a program to promote a client over a three month period to get the buzz around their product and create a solid email list. The client created a health care product and wanted to offer other products to her list in the future. The main idea was to put a simple but effective online marketing plan together for list building success. Once the list grew to critical mass, she would roll out more expensive products and even a membership website.
Here's how you can do the same:
1.Before you create your product, go to Google or Yahoo and check the popularity of your idea. Go to several online book sources, including Amazon, Borders and eBay to research the availability of your product. Once you've decided that the product you've chosen has a market that satisfies your needs, create or purchase the rights to your product.

2.Now, you'll need to gather enough of your market to make the project worthwhile. That means gathering a list. There are many ways to compile your list of prospects but you'll need to calculate the number of prospects you need to create the income you want. You'll be determining your conversion rate and tweaking your offer to reach optimal response.

3.You'll begin to craft your offer based on the needs of the prospects and the problems your product will solve. Make your offer based on the price and value of the product. If you have a low price product, you could attract your market with a one-close sales letter. If your product is expensive, you might need to set up a series of closes to bring your prospects around. That means capturing your prospect's interest with a series of email tutorials on tackling their issues. Set up a series of closes to gain their trust and acceptance.

4.Your website should have a special form to capture the name and email address of the prospects who come to your website. Once they sign up to receive more free information, you can continue to educate them on the benefits of your product. You can even continue to communicate with them regarding other associated products as long as you offer useful information on a regular basis.

5.Use weekly email alerts, electronic press releases, joint venture email lists, e-zines, your personal blog and articles to develop organic search engine traffic. If you want to get from zero to sixty fast, use pay per click advertising to boost your traffic. Be sure to offer free information in your pay per click ad. This has been the fastest way to attract attention and generate your list..

6.Get connected to other buyers and sellers in your product range. Offer incentives for them to carry your product or recommend your product to the people on their lists. Make it a point to test your ads regularly and track your progress.

Now if you've made some money through this system but haven't made your first million yet, don't worry. What you need to do is evaluate how much money you are making each month and the method you've used to successfully acquire your profits. If you duplicate that system with a new product launch every few months, you'll have yourself an online empire in a few short years.

The Danger of Getting Caught in the Message Clutter

The Danger of Getting Caught in the Message Clutter
I found out years ago when my first child was born that we had to ramp up our income. I was working for several clients and making enough money for a guy and his new bride to live a comfortable lifestyle. Then came the first child. We had to scramble to increase our income dramatically. I now had to market my services at a level that I've never had to before. I needed more clients!
The reality of advertising and marketing hit me very hard. I now had to face the same issues my clients face on a day to day basis. The biggest issue to marketing my business was getting through to more prospects. My message kept getting caught up in the mess of advertising, marketing, and daily life.
So here's my answer to overcoming the issues of getting my message to my prospects. First, let me give you a little background information.
April 2004: A Yankelovich Partners poll for the American Association of Advertising concluded that consumers believed they are constantly bombarded with advertising.
61% said that advertising was out of control.
60% said that they had a negative opinion of advertising.
54% said that they avoided buying products that overwhelm them with ads.
How do you overcome the Message Clutter?
Carefully select your buyers.
Educate your prospective clients.
Entertain them.
Focus on referrals
Make them an offer they can't refuse.
If you could build the ideal profile of your best client, what would they be like?
List 10 traits of your ideal client, then determine how many of them you can realistically service each month. How much is my ideal client really worth to me and how many of them can I work with?
Do the math to calculate your conversion rate.
If you actively presented your business to 100 prospective clients, how many could you convert to paying clients for your product or service in a month?
Is there an opportunity to generate repeat business from these clients?
What is the buying cycle for your average client?
Let's take your answers to the next step.

For example:
Our Dentist has an average per patient rate of $3200.00 a year. He wants to double his ideal patient roster and introduce several new products this year.
Our Dentist currently sees 100 patients a month. The number of patients that currently fit his ideal profile is about 40 a month. He determines that an additional 40 ideal clients a month would make his goal a reality. Now he must find them.

Educate your clients.
Now that we have a idea of who we need to reach, let's get to reaching them.
Let's be clear about this fact. People might hate being sold to but they all want more information on what to buy. They want to be educated.
People are interested in knowing more about the things that interest them. If they can get the right information at the right time, they will be in a great position to take action in their interest.
Entertain them.
When you want to stand out, you can make an impression with your audience by inserting humor into your presentations. Humor leaves a lasting impression.
Focus on Referrals
Another way to circumvent the message clutter is to petition your current clients for referrals. There are ways to do this without begging. One way is to combine education and referral strategies – Invite your clients to a seminar and offer an incentive to bring a few friends.
Make them a offer they can't refuse.
This is not just a tactic of gangster movies. If you search thoroughly through your feature, advantages and benefits of your offer, you can find one unique area that will undeniably appeal to your market. If you show them how they cannot lose by using you or your product then they will move to act in their own self interest.
Create offers that not only give top notch value, but also appropriate information. Give them an iron clad guarantee. There must be something in your offer that shows how confident you are in what you have or do.
Get your message to the right target audience. Then make sure that they get it over and over again.
The most important practice in marketing is getting the message to the people who welcome it as an opportunity, not an interruption. Use this frequency to develop a relationship. Education seems to build that relationship while offering something to the prospect that they find useful.
Education cuts through the message clutter because those who are looking for your solutions will better understand the nature of their problem and look more closely at your solution.