Friday, December 31, 2010

Interview: Vito Glazers

Vito G Glazers is Executive Director of Incorporated Consulting LTD, Owner of CPATank Affiliate Haven, and lives between Chicago, IL and Hollywood, CA. Follow on Twitter @vit0g.

Tell us a little background info about yourself. Where are you from? How old are you? How long have you been working in this industry?
I turned 25 this year and have been in this industry for going on 5 years now. I was born in Chicago and spent my younger years having my perspective molded between Central America and the U.S. I’m a perfectionist and extremely competitive.

What accomplishments so far are you the most proud of?
There’s no room for pride if you are stone cold in business, but the biggest accomplishment that everyone gets to share a part of is the deals I have negotiated and methods developed that have lead to millions in deposits to affiliates bank accounts over the past years.

How did you come to learn about this industry? Why did you choose this career? When did you first realize the full potential in affiliate marketing? When did you first “hit the big time?”
When affiliate marketing went into the billions, it chose me. I’m not retired, so I haven’t hit the big time yet.

What do you think more affiliates need to understand about the network side of things?
Affiliates need to realize that anything that is too good to be true, is. My top two examples are fly by night methods made up by people who aren’t doing it themselves and don’t care if they waste your time or not. The second problem is networks that offer unusually high payouts on similar offers just to shave you to remain profitable. Don’t be payout chasers; focus on earning the biggest bottom line possible with a trusted partner.

What do you think it takes to be successful as an affiliate?
Persistence. If you are dedicated to your own personal success you will find a way to successfully promote something, guaranteed.

What is the future of marketing?
The future of marketing is the internet. The future of internet marketing is going to be in new billing methods that do not involve a credit card. Due to the economy, credit cards have a bad stigma and are less available to younger and uneducated buyers. New billing methods like mobile billing, incentivizing, and social currency will be making up for consolidations in subprime credit card revenue.

If it’s possible for you to share, are there any particular niches that you currently favor? Or that you aren’t necessarily in right now but that you would recommend?
The need for a companion is instilled into our genetic code, so we recommend everyone use their best game to appeal to the masses. I will tell you that if you want to step up your personal dating life, having stacks of dating profits will substantially increase your closing ratios.

What niche has worked best for you?
I pulled in the majority of a million dollars in revenue last year promoting one dating offer. Now we’re just taking over every niche but staying true to our roots and still pull in 35% of our total revenues from dating.

Which methods of promotion do you favor?
Email and social messages are the direct mail of the internet. If you opened a pizza delivery service, the first thing you would do is hit everybody with your flyer and wait for orders. Private messages are today’s way of getting your flyer in front of everybody’s face.

What have you been up to recently? What projects are you working on?
Right now I have just finished making the full transition from the adult industry to mainstream CPA marketing. My next move is to empower affiliates to a million dollars a month in payouts. We are currently about half way there and are weeks ahead of our projections so it would be great to hit the goal early.

Do you think anything particular in your past prepared you for this industry? Your education? Jobs you’ve held before?
Everything in life built me to dominate in this industry, and everything I’m facing now is preparing me for my next conquest. Working on the floor at the Chicago Board of Trade taught me how to stay focused under intense pressure, manage risk and assets and accept losses as an insurable business expense. Working in banking taught me the secrets of debt and risk management that most networks are not capable of assessing. I am obsessed with limiting risk, which in turn leads to having a flawless reputation when it comes to paying affiliates.

What are your greatest strengths?
The ability to see the biggest picture possible has always been my saving grace. My instincts will allow me to survive no matter what condition the world is in.

What are your greatest weaknesses?
I have no weaknesses.

What motivates you?
Without women, all the money in the world is meaningless. But it’s a zero sum game; to me it’s just about winning the most points and pushing every limit possible. I’m a dangerous opponent with nothing to lose and everything to gain.

What is the best advice you’ve been given and try to apply to your life?
Best advice I ever got was from Dennis Rodman at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood. I was having lunch with Rodman, casting producer Sara O’neil, and one of his managers, Elkin. I watched him give one of the most amazing reality show pitches I have seen in my life. After papers were shuffled around and something about ‘just leave a check for $500,000 at my agent’s office,’ he turned to me and said, “You have to put your face out there to take it to the next level.” After that I stopped hiding behind monikers and aliases online and decided it was time to establish myself as a brand name.

Who has impacted you most in your career, and how?
My parents probably had the most direct influence. My father taught me how to save, my mother taught me how to stunt. It is the balance of the two that allows me to be stable but also respected.

What kinds of people do you have difficulties working with? Any good stories?
Investors drive me insane. If you want to run things your way just buy me out already!

What are some of your long-term goals? How much is enough? If money was no object, what would you be doing?
My long term goal is to raise a family. Relationships, children and life give you enough problems on their own, so I’d like the family I create to have money be one less thing to worry about. My future is in politics, whether at the local, national or global level is undetermined. The assets I am attaining now are creating the foundation to give me the necessary reach to make real change in the world through positive leadership.

Where do you want to be ten years from now?
Ten years from now I envision myself raising a family in Switzerland managing a low risk bond fund. I attain satisfaction in many mediums that most people would not be able to relate to. Money to me is just a tool to be able to make any decision I want.

How do you like to spend your free time? What does work-life balance mean to you?
I don’t have any free time. All my time is for sale.

Do you have a Twitter account or Facebook “Like” page?
I am the leader the leaders follow. You can catch the fundamentals @vit0g and the network details @CPATank but for the next few days you’re just going to see a bunch of @jonathanvolk retweets with my affiliate link in them.

Thursday, December 30, 2010

Local Ad Business Heats Up With Yext Tags Offering

Google is committed to its local Internet marketing efforts to lengths like we have not seen the search giant go to in a while. Searching for new revenue streams will do that.

What have they done recently?

-Moved Marissa Mayer to oversee the local search and advertising efforts

-Changed the face of their search results to focus on Google Place Pages

-Pissed off just about every site that has been feeding at the Google local search trough for a long time

It’s the last point that makes what Yext has done with its Tags offerings. First of all, it appears to mimicking Google by making their tags look just like the ones that have been rolled out to promote Google Place Pages in the Google SERP’s. They are obviously trying to confuse SMB’s and get the benefit of the Google push. By looking almost exactly the same SMB’s can think they are buying one thing when they are really buying another! Nice. As if the SMB Internet marketing world isn’t confusing enough.

What does the Yext system do and what is it providing? According to TechCrunch

They (local search engines) enter into an anti-Google alliance, of course. The company organizing this alliance is Yext, a New York City startup which specializes in pay-per-call advertising for local businesses and dashboards to help them manage their reputations and listings online. On Monday, it will launch a new feature called “Tags” which will let small businesses highlight their names with a little tag and customizable message across about a dozen local listings sites. Launch partners for this “Tag Alliance” will include MapQuest, Citysearch, Yellowbook, Local.com, SuperPages, White Pages, MerchantCircle, and Topix, with more to come.

Yext gives the ability for SMB’s to add tags to their listings across several local sites. My question is, as these sites see less and less traffic from Google due to the changes in the SERP’s how many people will see these tags?

Yext has a built in ‘audience’ in the 30,000 small businesses that have signed up for its free reputation monitoring tool. I have not tried this offering so I have no idea how effective it is. Being as close to the industry as I am I know how important it is to try these offerings out before you place any merit on them at all (in other words there is a lot of junk out there). Of course, for now it is free so it is attractive.

The Yext dashboard for this tags service will look like this

So it looks like the battle lines have been drawn. Google is making a push to promote their Place Page offering. This makes sense since it is more information about real search results rather than being pushed to a directory of sorts. The cries of monopoly and manipulation will continue to grow but it is far better for those who have had their food source turned way down (i.e. Citysearch, Local.com, SuperPages etc) to go out and try to make a competing effort. Google still has no obligation to support these other businesses. None, so why everyone is griping is beyond me.

Here’s what I want to know. How many searchers are going to these other resources through channels other than Google? How many people go directly to Citysearch to get answers about local businesses? This will be the real information that needs to surface for SMB’s to say that this Tags offering is a good option. The pitch used to be that these entities owned the SERP’s and drove traffic to local businesses due to their Google success. Now as standalones can they offer enough traffic and value?

I don’t know how many times I have heard SMB’s cry foul over “Internet marketing” packages offered by Yellow Page providers (regardless of what color or stripe they are). There is already a serious lack of trust between SMB’s and these players so why would the SMB want to invest directly in ads on their sites if they have not seen results from promises of the past?

The local space is certainly heating up. Google has made its statement loud and clear that it wants to dominate the vertical. They have the best chance to do so. What will get in their way is their current lack of human interaction and their intense desire to automate everything. Local doesn’t work like that. I suspect they think they know better but I am not sure they do.

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Pew Claims 65% Have Purchased Online Content

When I first saw this report I was pretty surprised. By the title alone I was thinking about content in a content marketing manner. Either I was thinking about paid content in a far too narrow manner (paid subscriptions for newspapers etc etc) or Pew is looking at it too broadly. I think it’s a little of both.

In the overview the Pew survey says

Music, software, and apps are the most popular content that internet users have paid to access or download, although the range of paid online content is quite varied and widespread.

Personally, I don’t usually include music, software and apps as content. While I am not quite sure what to call them exactly (products?), I still have trouble considering these as content in the way we as Internet marketers usually think about it. When you get to the kinds of content we are familiar with, unfortunately the numbers do get familiar as in they aren’t real good.

Other forms of content perform even worse.

So what is the future of paid content on the web? Do we need to expand the definition to make it look more interesting or do we have to settle in the realization that not many people will currently buy content online and those that are more likely to (higher income earners) narrow the potential field even further?

Your thoughts?

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“The Story Sells It”


I love em all. From American Pickers to Pawn Stars and now Auction Kings, Storage Wars, and Auction$ (Green Channel), I love em all. Call me a junkie for selling, marketing, and deals.

While watching one of these Auction shows, one of the things that stood out to me was when the host of the show was saying how they always try to get a background story on an item. Having a story helps to increase the bids.

They get this story, pass it on to the auctioneer who then uses it to get maximum bids.

One time I saw an older woman selling a signed Johnny Cash guitar. She bumped into Johnny Cash, fell over and they started a friendship from there. As the auction was going on, the lady who was in attendance started crying. The auctioneer points her out, and says, "there's a lot of heart in this guitar folks."

The guitar sold for way more than it was appraised for. Now, there are a ton of factors that go into the final price that people are willing to pay but I really think that the story played a big part.

Use Stories To Increase Sales

The same goes with online marketing. Having a story REALLY helps sell.

I'm thinking about ways to use this more in my sales processes. Sure there are flogs and farticles but what other ways can you use this?

What about videos do you think help sell? I think videos allow you to clearly communicate a story to someone... just like you would in real life.

Just take a look at any of the guru product launches. First a story and a problem followed by how they overcame this problem.

Other ways I have seen stories help to sell a product or service is via email.

I get emails all the time from people who are telling a story and using that story to sell something. Shoemoney happens to be really good at this and is one of the reasons why he is always a top affiliate for product launches!

What are some other ways that you can use stories to sell?

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How to Supercharge Your Blog

2010 is coming to an end and now is the time for bloggers to begin to have supercharge your blognew plans for moving their blog ahead in the new year.

Many of us have invested a lot of effort into our blogs and we’re now reaping the rewards and many of us have wasted a lot of time doing things that contribute nothing to the success of our blog in the year 2010. It is time to revise your blogging plan and this article will be giving you some tips to supercharge your blog.

Focus on Your Content

Writing quality content is essential to your success as a blogger and there is no point in writing a post if it won’t have an impact on others. The more effort you put into your blog posts and the more impact it has on people’s lives the better results you will get from your blog.

When I was still a fairly new blogger, I was averaging 150 visitors a day and I wrote a guest post for a particular top blog. I didn’t focus on giving the best of my content and I believed traffic and marketing is all that matters. My guest post went live on that blog and I ended up having over 1000 visitors to my blog on the same day, fast forward to 3 days and you will hardly believe I went back to getting the same number of visitors I was getting before that particular guest post.

There is a great difference between getting traffic and making your traffic stick and as a blogger your main aim should be to get quality traffic that sticks – that can only be done by providing quality content.

Lead by Example

If you try to estimate the number of blogs we have online about how to make money blogging you will end up finding out that there are millions of them.

The truth is that very few of these bloggers truly make money online and this explains the reason why most of them find it very difficult to make money from their blogs.

There are a lot of hypes on the internet that people are tired of reading just any content; they want to read from someone who has been there.

The only way to successfully make money blogging is not only by blogging in the how to make money online niche, in fact, you will easily achieve success with other niches you’re more knowledgeable and passionate about.

If you’re yet to be making money online try to search within yourself to see what you’re more knowledgeable and successful at; focus on building a successful online business in this area before teaching people how to make money online.

A true blogger would lead by action and not by words. You should let people see clearly that you not only know what you’re saying but you’re getting results from it. This will give you more credibility and will make people trust anything you say, it will also make them willing to share your content while referring their friends and family members to your blog.

Promote! Promote! Promote!

It doesn’t matter how knowledgeable you are about a subject or how sticky the content you write is, people won’t know about you if you don’t market your blog.

While it is highly important to focus on giving the best of your content while at the same time building trust by making sure you’re successful at what you preach it is also highly important to spend more time and focus your efforts on marketing your blog.

Actually, doing the first two things will help your blog market itself but you need momentum to give your blog a head start. Once you have this momentum you will find everything very easy.

There are several ways to promote your blog, and below are 3 methods I’ve found great success with.

- Guest Blogging: Guest blogging is the process of writing for another blog in order to get the word out about your blog. There are several benefits of writing guest posts for other blogs but the two immediate benefits is that it helps you gain traffic and instant credibility. Other benefits such as link building follows.

Guest blogging is the main way I promoted my blog in 2010 and it has yielded far more results than I expected.

- Blog Commenting: Another great way to get the word out about your blog is by commenting on other blogs. Promoting your blog successfully through blog commenting is more about commenting smartly and not in the numbers. Look for the top blogs with the best posts and community in your niche, read their posts and make well-thought out, highly sensible comments and you’ll be amazed at the type of quality traffic you will get back to your blog.

- Collaboration: Collaborating with other bloggers is the best way to build a great community fast if you’re a new blogger. Do your best to network with other bloggers and make them see that you truly care about them, let them know you’re interested in collaborating with them and “carefully” outline what they’ll be gaining from it. Once you’ve gotten a reply from them and the post is live, try to notify them about it and tell them to share it – with time you will have built a great community.

Conclusion

Note that building a successful blog is not something that can be done in a day, many few drops of water make a ocean and the more you work on building your blog with combination of little efforts you will achieve success in due time.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

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Wednesday, December 29, 2010

AOL’s 1000% ROI Secret


As a direct response marketer, I love hearing about direct response campaigns that worked on a massive scale.

If you're roughly 18 or older, you probably remember seeing those amazing AOL CD's that came in the mail... like EVERY DAY during the 1990's.

It's amazing to me that sending so many was ever profitable. I mean, I can't even remember how many of these discs I threw away, used as a frisbee, used with firecrackers. In fact, when my dad built his 1,000,000+ volt tesla coil in the garage, we had a lot of fun using the CD's as targets of the 4-5 foot sparks that shot out of the top.

(This is the Tesla Coil that my dad rebuilt for my little sister's 21st birthday party - Fun times!)

Back... to AOL.

In an interesting article about AOL's cost of those CD's, the CEO (at the time) revealed a very interesting tid bit of information.

They aimed to spend about 10% of the lifetime value of the customer. In other words, they aimed to have an ROI of 1000% from sending those CD's! Impressive ROI in just about any market.

The lifetime value of the customer was roughly $350 which meant that they spent around $35 per customer on average.

Simply amazing! With that kind of ROI (and a LARGE demographic of... just about every household in America), it makes sense when you hear that at one time 50% of all CD's being produced had an AOL logo on them.

It's really these CD's that caused AOL to grow from a 70 million dollar company to a $150 BILLION company (market cap).

Imagine being able to spend roughly $300 million dollars (the estimated cost of the CD's) and generating 1000% ROI on it! Phew... That translated to one subscriber every 6 seconds.

I always smile when I tell friends I advertise on Facebook, Google, Yahoo, MSN, and email. I almost always get the response, "Do people even click on those ads?!"

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Tuesday, December 28, 2010

The Online – Offline Marketing Chasm

I just saw a chart from MarketingSherpa that shows the most important objectives of an e-mail campaign. The findings make sense to a point. Here is the chart showing what is deemed most important in descending order.

I was a little surprised at the difference between the most important e-mail objective (to generate revenue) and the idea of e-mail supporting offline marketing programs. It’s data like this that should create some serious head-scratching amongst marketing executives.

Why? It’s because it shows that the online and offline marketing world are siloed more often than not and that is just bad policy. 25% of the respondents didn’t even think that supporting offline efforts through e-mail was important at all. Huh? Really?! Over the years the Internet marketing community has worked so hard to establish itself that it may be moving toward alienating itself to some degree.

Whether we Internet marketers want to admit it or not there is still a substantial offline marketing world out there that is very effective. One of the great things about the online marketing space is the ability to help make offline channels more efficient and more lucrative. By identifying places where offline marketing spend is being under-utilized or outright wasted we can save money. The areas that are left stand to benefit from the online efforts thus creating a holistic approach to reaching the customer or prospect rather than building fences around the online and offline channels.

If companies are serious that revenue generation is the number one objective for e-mail marketing the idea of supporting every marketing effort, both offline and online, should be a very close second in importance.

Until marketers stop being territorial and actually integrating online and offline efforts fully, success won’t be what it could be. That’s too bad.

How do you view your offline marketing efforts in relation to your online efforts? Are they mutually exclusive? Are they distant cousins or are they joined at the hip?

Let us know in the comments. Thanks.

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What Internet Marketers Should Concentrate On For 2011

This is not your typical Top Ten list of “Things to Look for in the Next Year or So!”. There are plenty of those out there and they all pretty much say the same thing. So rather than add to the noise I am going to come at 2011 from a different angle. To be honest, none of these are going to bowl you over. Why? Because most things worth paying attention to really aren’t that sexy. Sorry to burst your bubble.

Here is my “Top Ten Things Internet Marketers Should Concentrate on in 2011”.

1.Choose Strategy Over Activity – This one is a biggie these days. Many people are still rushing headlong into social media, location based services and more so they can say they are doing it. Often though they are doing it without an express purpose or goal. None of the online world works on the “If You Build It They Will Come” principle. Just being there could actually mean you are spending valuable resources and cycles on things that aren’t getting the job done. Create a strategy that makes sense and get involved only in activities based on strategy that will generate revenue. All the rest is just being busy.

2. Get Back to Basics – In the rush to stay ahead of the curve, many businesses have left the basics behind and in most cases incomplete. For Internet marketers (especially the smaller players and B to B marketers) that means making sure that the foundation for your online efforts is strong. Does your website look dated? Change it. Have you not taken the time to make sure you have the basic SEO elements (for example, keyword appropriate content matched with title tags matched with H1 keyword use) in place on each and every page of your site? This is the absolute bare minimum but it beats not doing anything at all. Have you put in basic key performance indicators (KPI’s) to measure your progress or lack there of? Do you check them regularly? You get the point. Basics are boring but they are essential. Just do them before you do anything else.

3. Spread the Wealth – Share your knowledge with others in the company whether they want to hear it or not. Why? Because more and more people are seeing that Internet marketing and social media are rare in that anyone in the company can participate. Many do and don’t even realize it. If you are educating the rest of the company on what they can do to help, you are enabling people to be involved and contribute to the success. People like that. Management likes that. Don’t horde your knowledge. Be an educator and see what others can do to help once they are empowered to do so.

4. Fire Your Consultant – This is something that many people should have done long ago. If things are not progressing with any outside or outsourced help you are paying then stop paying them. The Internet marketing industry as a whole is rife with experts, gurus, mavens and more. If there is no progress in a relationship you have with an outsourced provider then end the relationship. It’s that simple.

5. Hire A Consultant – If you are stuck and have reached the limit of your knowledge in a particular area of Internet marketing (face it, no one as in NO ONE, can know all there is to know about everything related to Internet marketing and social media) then it’s OK to seek outside help. Find someone who is willing to work with you within your current constraints but is then willing to push you beyond those constraints if it will help you succeed. You may cycle through several consultants before you find the right fit. That’s OK. When you make this step though don’t think you deserve anything for free or that experience doesn’t carry value. Many consultants are not cheap and they shouldn’t be. In this area, the expression ‘you get what you pay for’ is a very real axiom so be careful and don’t be cheap!

6. Listen More, Talk Less – We are in an industry that has everyone out in the middle of the town square yelling at the top of their lungs in order to be heard. Don’t join the fray. Sit back and listen for helpful information. Turn your bullshit filter on high and make sure you are only letting in the information that will move you forward. If you try to take it all in you will waste time, money and more and get little or nothing in return. Use tools like Google Alerts or Trackur (shameless plug alert!) to filter through the noise.

Listening is also about knowing what the competition is doing, what people are saying about your company online, what prospects are really looking for. Remember that we are given one mouth and two ears so use them in the same proportion (for those who have a tough time with math that just means listen twice as much as you talk).

7. Don’t Assume – This goes back to strategy and is important in all areas of your Internet marketing efforts. Most people work on the assumption that if something is being written about then everyone must be using it. This could not be further from the truth especially in the Internet space. Make sure that the techniques and tools you are going to consider have a real chance of connecting with your customers and prospects. If not why in the world would you even consider them? Another old axiom that is SO true in the Internet space is “If you assume, you will make an ASS out of U and ME” (thank you Felix Unger).

8. Be A Learner – Never has it been more important to be a “life long learner” than it is today. In the Internet marketing space there are no ‘set it and forget it’ options. Things change rapidly and it is hard to keep up. Budget for and invest in education regarding Internet marketing and social media. If you are not learning everyday in this space then you are falling behind much faster than you could ever imagine.

9. Effective Trumps Cool – Based on what industry you work in and many other variables like resource availability, you may have to come to the understanding that what is deemed to be cool doesn’t impact your business at all so it’s not something to consider. It’s no fun making practical decisions that keep you from playing with the cool kids but at the end of the day wouldn’t you rather have the respect of your colleagues, a potential raise, job security and more over an ‘atta boy!’ by some industry flunkie whose ‘followers’ consist of 95% spammers and automated follows? Not everyone can be an Internet marketing star and really there are only a select few worth listening to anyway. Be effective rather than be cool. But hey, if you can do both then more power to you!

10. Avoid Shiny Objects – One thing that will happen in 2011 is that there will be Silicon Valley press folks drooling over some new technology or service that comes out in January and they will need to tell you just how game changing it is. Truth be told, many of these ‘cool’ things are used by the tech insiders and that’s it. They don’t have mass market appeal and never will. The technology insider press is very incestuous and self-serving (read: self-important) and while it’s tempting to think that what they are talking about could be ‘the thing’, most times it’s not. In fact, by the time you have worked out the plan to get that latest trinket into your system they have moved on, hyped something else and left that ‘next greatest thing’ on the Internet marketing scrap heap. They aren’t much different than that kid on Christmas morning who plays with the cool toy for 5 minutes then complains that they need another cool toy. Maybe we should take a cue from the little kids and play with the box instead. It’s not as cool but it does more!

So there it is. If you made it this far, congratulations. What would you add or take away from this? Agree or disagree? Thanks for playing along.

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Making Millions Off Suing Spammers

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Are You Still Using That Old Phone? Mobile Marketing Goes for the Throat

“Are you really still rockin’ a flip phone?”

That’s an ad you might see if you try surfing the web with your Motorola Razr phone only it’s being sent to you by Nokia. It’s called “intercept campaigning” and according to an article in today’s Wall Street Journal, it’s becoming very popular among cell phone companies as they all vie for a piece of a pretty small pie.

Says, Phuc Truong, managing director of Mobext:

“The [wireless] market is saturated, and pretty cutthroat. There’s not that much room to play. You can go after a new segment that doesn’t have mobile phones, or you could refine and search for users that just are getting out of their two-year plans.”

We’ve all seen these targeted ads online, but advances in targeting technology have now made it possible to detect what kind of phone a person is using and who provides their service.

But just because we can, doesn’t mean we should. Ads that slam a competitor are bad enough, but when an ad starts taking issue with my own personal choices, that’s just wrong. If you want to sell me a product, convince me that yours is the best tool for the job. Don’t beat me down with the fact that my current choice is out-dated or out of fashion.

What do you think? Is intercept campaigning smart advertising or one step over the line?

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Monday, December 27, 2010

E-mail and Social Media To Get Larger Slice of Budget Pie in 2011

It’s the time of the year when the Marketing Optimists’ Club convenes daily and tells how 2011 is the year of (fill in the blank here). There are wonderful predictions that are based on surveys of nameless companies and their so-called executives who break out their crystal balls and give service providers hope that there will be business in 2011.

Today’s version comes from Strongmail via eMarketer. Strongmail (I always think of Homestar Runner’s Strong Bad when I see this name) provides solutions to integrate e-mail and social media so I’ll give you one guess what their survey found. Ding! Ding! Ding! You got it! Both e-mail AND social media will see increased spending in 2011 and will merit more attention than search by a longshot.

Here is the graph, which proves that this prediction is right on the money (because pictures don’t stretch the truth, marketers do!).

I don’t disagree that e-mail and social media are important and deserve attention in marketing budgets. They are both important when used by the right kind of company in the right way. What I always have trouble with is ‘research’ that tells the perfect story for the people who would benefit from that ‘research’ being true. In this case, StrongMail gives it the double whammy by giving a rosy picture to both areas it is concentrated on. Gee, since they already know who these people are I suppose StrongMail is going to see the same growth as these budgets do, right?

As for just how this plan to integrate email and social media plays out, the numbers tell the story of a lot of folks getting ready to get ready as 72% of the respondents range in answers from “We are looking for a way to do this” to “I don’t know what you’re talking about”.

So as it is at the end of every single day as these numbers come out to confirm the relevancy of the research source, we ask you to read and apply with caution.

This prediction season, let us serve as your marketing designated driver. If you drink too much “This Is The Year of ___________” brand Kool-Aid, turn to us here at Marketing Pilgrim. We’ll sober you up by looking at the source of these prognostications. Then we’ll remind you that the only thing that matters is how this applies to your efforts today not whether someone tells you its degree of importance tomorrow.

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Friday, December 24, 2010

Interview: Michael Mindes

Michael Mindes is the founder of Tasty Minstrel Games, a relatively new publisher of hobby board games. Despite primarily dealing with a physical product, Michael is actively marketing over the Internet. Michael especially likes email marketing, blogging, and generating organic results on Facebook, and has seen great success in these areas.

Tell us a little background info about yourself. Where are you from? How old are you? How long have you been making money online?
I live in Tucson, Arizona and have been here for most of my 29 years of life. I am married and I have 3 children. During the day, I am a financial advisor/planner (no, you can’t hire me and I am not soliciting business) to pay the bills while I build up Tasty Minstrel Games.

I wouldn’t say I have been making any money online, but I have been actively gathering permission assets and building up authority in the board game publishing arena for about 15 months.

Do you have any experience with affiliate marketing? If so, to what extent?
My experience with affiliate marketing is very limited. Like many other people, I have read the blogs people like Shoemoney, John Chow, and Jonathan Volk for a long time. Like many of those people I gave affiliate marketing a try.

To me, affiliate marketing feels too much like being a transactional stock broker (which I opted not to be). Except that there are tons of people actively scouting and trying to take your best ideas. I would rather have a group of people trust me enough to take my recommendations.

What accomplishments so far are you the most proud of?
In life, I am most proud of my 7 years of happy marriage, my 3 kids, and Tasty Minstrel’s progress. In the realm of Internet marketing I am most proud of the following:
• Building a laser-targeted and responsive list of over 3,000 people.
• Having over a 9% conversion rate for people to buy out of my list.
• Building a network quickly within the board game industry.
• Doing all of the above in my spare time.

How did you become successful? Why did you choose this career? When did you first realize the full potential in the Internet? When did you first “hit the big time?”
I became successful as an online marketer by following through with the sales and trust building techniques that I learned by managing people’s life savings and constantly convincing them that their trust is well placed.

I chose to go into financial planning because I could go to work with my father, support my growing family, and have challenging and fulfilling work. I chose to publish board games, because I love games. Games are my absolute and fundamental passion in life.

Obviously any communication method as fast and inexpensive as the Internet will be incredibly powerful. But I did not really feel the scope of it, until I first started bribing people to join my email list. I gave away some games for free, and 545 people signed up for a chance to win in the first 7 days. That was with one forum post.

What do you think it takes to be successful?
Dedication, Honesty, Intelligence, Passion, OTHER PEOPLE (relationships are incredibly important)

What have been your biggest failures and frustrations?
Getting a shipment of 4,000 games with numerous manufacturing issues. It was significant effort to mitigate the damage, but sales were slower, product was lost, and hours have been spent sending out replacement parts.

What is the single toughest problem you've had to face, and how did you get through it?
See above. The initial response is detailed on my blog. Being as transparent as possible on my blog has led to a small army of people that are dedicated to defending Tasty Minstrel Games online, which is wonderful.

What is the future of marketing?
Being able to directly reach people that want to hear from you, and turning customers into evangelists. Building quality relationships over time and email marketing are the solution here.

What have you been up to recently? What projects are you working on?
In the past I have been distracted by a number of things. Which is why I have so many free eBooks available, including an 80+ page eBook about relationship building strategy and email marketing. Right now I am just working on improving Tasty Minstrel.

Do you think anything particular in your past prepared you for this industry? Your education? Jobs you’ve held before?
The pressures of having 100% commission based compensation and convincing people to have me advise them on investing their life savings makes you learn fast. When compared to bringing in a $1,000,000+ account, selling some $40 board games seems easy.

What are your greatest strengths?
My stunning good looks. After that, my ability to sell stuff and generate trust through honesty and transparency.

What are your greatest weaknesses?
Project management and slacking off. Thankfully, when running a business you can find people to fill in for your weaknesses.

What motivates you?
It will sound cheesy, but bringing families closer together through games. Oh, and providing for my wife and 3 children.

What is the best advice you’ve been given and try to apply to your life?
Do it and do it now. How long does it take to send a 1-2 line email? Fill out an interview? Make a phone call? Each item takes very little time, and the aggregate of all those actions adds up to some amazing results.

For example, I let these interview questions sit for 20 days. I could have spent the 1 hour to answer the questions and been covered on a popular blog that much sooner.

Who has impacted you most in your career, and how?
My father. He taught me probably 80+% of what I need to know in sales and marketing (in life too). The rest I have learned through reading the thoughts of great minds, thinking, taking action, and remembering what works.

What are some of your long-term goals? How much is enough? If money was no object, what would you be doing?
I would like to be involved with publishing board games full-time. Providing modestly for my family and having extra money for emergencies is enough. If money was no object, I would be spending time with my family, playing games with my friends, and helping to change the world.

Where do you want to be ten years from now?
Alive and married to my wife is sufficient for my needs.

How do you like to spend your free time? What doe work-life balance mean to you?
I spend my free time working on building up Tasty Minstrel Games. Life is work, truly challenging and satisfying work is the basis of happiness.

If you could go back to being 18, what different career choices would you make?
I would have started earlier. It would have been nice to realize I do not need an endorsement of any kind to start building a business or changing the world.

What is your greatest achievement outside of work? What are some of your unfulfilled dreams?
Again, cheesy… But my greatest achievement in life is my successful marriage for 7 years and my 3 beautiful loving children. While I am sure I have unfulfilled dreams, it doesn’t matter because I have them. They are awesome.

Do you have a Twitter account or Facebook “Like” page?
I like to use Facebook as a natural funnel for Tasty Minstrel, so we have a page for the company and for every game that we publish.

http://www.twitter.com/michaelmindes
http://www.twitter.com/tastyminstrel
http://www.facebook.com/tastyminstrelgames
http://www.facebook.com/homesteaders
http://www.facebook.com/terraprime
http://www.facebook.com/trainofthoughtgame
http://www.facebook.com/playjab
http://www.facebook.com/belfort

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Wednesday, December 22, 2010

How to Stop Marketing (And What to Do Instead)

sign saying No Salesmen Or Agents

Back when I took copywriting clients, I had one request that seemed to come up over and over again.

“I don’t want to do any marketing or selling,” the client would say. “I just really hate all that stuff. It makes me feel sleazy and gross and I don’t want my name associated with it and I don’t want to have anything to do with it.

“But, um, I don’t want the business to die.

“Is it hopeless? Is there anything you can do for me?”

You might think I laughed at this person and told him to enjoy being broke. But no.

“Actually, I can help you with that,” I said. “No problem, we won’t do any marketing. Here’s what we’re going to do instead.”

“Instead of marketing, we’re just going to communicate. We’re going to talk to your customers and explain who you are, how your thing will make their life better, and then we’ll spell out exactly what they should do next. Would that work for you?”

Instantly I could hear the stress melt out of their voice. “Oh my god, that would be amazing. Can you really do that? Thank you!”

This, ladies and gentlemen, is why packaging is so important.

Don’t overcomplicate

If Don Draper had this client, he would have called him an idiot. But he still would have signed him for a fat account, and done some stellar work on it. Then he would have slept with his wife.

Don Draper was in advertising before people got confused. He knew that persuasion always boils down to shockingly simple principles.

If marketing makes you throw up in your mouth a little, quit doing it.

Instead, just let your potential customers know who you are.

Let them know how your thing will make their lives better.

And tell them, very clearly and specifically, what to do next.

No marketing required. ;)

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Make Money with Clickbooth’s CPC Platform

ClickBooth is recognized as being one of the leaders in affiliate networks, but what else do they have going on? It’s seems like there is always some new project going on behind the scenes or a new tool that they are offering to their network affiliates. The latest service from the company, is the ClickBooth CPC Platform. The best way to explain the product is, think Google Adsense, with a CPA twist.

As you know, Google Adsense has always been one of the easiest ways for a blog or web site to make money, but not the most profitable. Using the same concept, the ClickBooth CPC Platform allows you to place different ad spots on your site. This ad spot would then rotate and match up relevant content / advertisements for your audience. On the example below, you will see that that Clickbooth’s CPC Platform allows for thumbnail images along side the ads, which Adsense doesn’t. With CB CPC you have the option to serve Text-only Ads or Text Plus Image Ads. This should help with interest and click through rates on your ad space.

While the ads are rotating different advertisers and CPA offers within the ClickBooth network, you are getting paid on a CPC basis. The offers currently rotating through the banner spots, are a collection of the same offers running on the CB network. I currently have the banner set above to display “Business” oriented advertisements, while on my other entertainment based web site I have “Games” advertisements targeted. The CB CPC platform is still new, but I would like to see a much wider selection of advertisements available, to match with the right user demographic. I’m sure this is currently in the works.

CPA vs. CPC Advertising – Which is Better You?

Serving CB CPC is a good idea for anyone that has traffic that they don’t know how to monetize. Any generic or news related traffic would do well with the ads being served across the network. The CB CPC ads are a good example of the same ads that we see on major news sites and high traffic pages, which are being purchased on a CPM basis, then sends traffic to a flog/testimonial/sales page. These types of ads draw attention and get clicks.

If you have a web site that is already focused on a specific topic and you know what your viewers want, you wouldn’t serve CB CPC on your site. Just like if you were trying to promote a CPA offer through ClickBooth, you should link directly to that offer instead of trying to run CB CPC and see which works better. When you run traffic to offers directly, you can get a better idea of how conversion work.

Bottom line… I think CB CPC would perform best with generic audience web sites, blogs and article directories. While more tight niche web sites should individually pick out what offers they want to choose and promote to their audience.

As mentioned, I’m currently setup with my own ClickBooth CPC account and have placed a few of their CPC banners on a few of my other sites which receive a decent amount of generic traffic. I’ve also thrown one of their banners in the side bar of this blog just for some extra stats. I will follow up with their results compared to Adsense and CPM ad networks during the last week of the month.

Join ClickBooth & Get a Free Apple iPad

Be sure to join ClickBooth CPA or CPC Network and you could get a free Apple iPad. All you need to do is join, leave “IPAD2010” in your application comments section, reach $5,000 in revenue within the first 60 days, and that’s it! Amazing deal… you only need to generate an average of $84 a day for 60 days and CB will send you a free Apple iPad. One of the best network promotions I’ve seen yet!

Apply to ClickBooth CPC & See if You Qualify!

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The FDA & Social Media: What To Expect In 2011

If you could have put all the people working in marketing at pharmaceutical companies together in a room today, you might have heard a collective sigh of disappointment. As many suspected for weeks or even months now, the FDA quietly confirmed that the long awaited guidelines for how to use social media for which they held a hearing in late 2009 won’t be coming this year and to expect them (perhaps) in Q1 of 2011. Earlier this month, however, the FDA did release a sweeping document that received much less fanfare from marketers - even though the implications of it may change the world of pharmaceutical marketing for the next half decade at least.

That document focused on the FDA’s “Strategic Priorities: 2011 - 2015″ and offers nearly 50 pages of insights into the future direction of the FDA and offers many hidden insights that everyone who is considering doing any marketing or communications for a drug, medical device, healthcare organization or biomedical research organization should pay attention to. Here are a few of the most noteworthy passages in that document along with thoughts from our Ogilvy Digital Healthcare team on their significance.

“FDA’s primary responsibility is to protect the American people from unsafe or mislabeled food, drugs, and other medical products and to make sure consumers have access to accurate, science-based information about the products they need and rely on every day.”

1. What It Means: Despite Lots Of Hope From The Industry, Social Media Guidance Isn’t A Priority For The FDA
There is only one point in the entire 48 page document of strategic priorities where social media is even mentioned, and much of the document focuses on the much bigger challenges and scope of the FDA. When you work in Pharma, you tend to underestimate the scope of the FDA’s mission. As this document spells out, issuing social media guidance is nowhere near a priority for the FDA - and despite what anyone working in this area may want to see happen, it is unlikely that this will change in the near future.

“One of the most pressing FDA-wide goals is promoting transparency in FDA’s operations, activities, processes, and decision making, as well as making information and data available in user-friendly formats while also protecting confidential and proprietary information.”

2. What It Means: The FDA Will Continue To Actively Use Social Media To Spread Its Own Messages
Perhaps even more frustrating than not having concrete guidance will likely be the knowledge and easy evidence that the FDA is poised to use social media much more actively themselves to reach patients, healthcare professionals and other governmental organizations. They have already launched several forward thinking social media initiatives including tweeting about FDA Recalls and creating a dedicated YouTube Channel. A few smart people have already noted the irony of this fact, but in the coming year it is likely to continue unchanged.

“FDA recognizes that communications must be adapted to meet the needs of many groups who differ with respect to literacy, language, culture, race/ethnicity, disability, and other factors. Social media tools can help meet some of FDA’s communication challenge. We are planning to use social networks to create a virtual community of organizations and individuals to disseminate FDA science-based information on women’s health. We will also be collaborating with other government partners, to integrate FDA information on women’s health into their programs.”

3. What It Means: The FDA Is Already Prioritizing Social Media As A Channel For Reaching Special Populations
This passage reveals a somewhat narrow view of social media’s potential to reach smaller niche populations based on gender, ethnicity or rare conditions - however it does demonstrate that there may be particular situations where social media may face fewer barriers to usage by the FDA, and also serve a highly important patient need for authoritative and accurate information, as well as access to a hard-to-find support network.

“Summary Of Long Term Objectives For Human Drugs: Oversee drug promotion and marketing to ensure that marketed drug labeling and advertising is truthful and not misleading.”

4. What It Means: Most FDA Oversight And Regulation Will Continue To Focus On “Misleading” Promotional Efforts
Though there is certainly room for interpretation in what the definition of “misleading” might be - history has shown that this one metric continues to be the most important one that the FDA uses when monitoring communications efforts from pharmaceutical companies. Added to this is the consistent feedback from epatients and their loved ones that in most cases they would welcome informational content and support tools from pharma companies, as long as they are not presented in an underhanded, dishonest, manipulative or overly promotional manner.

“For FDA to achieve its mission of promoting and protecting the public health, the agency must have a well-defined communications strategy to address the information needs and concerns of both internal and external audiences. An FDA strategic communication strategy will ensure the agency has clear and concise messages about its work and will ensure those messages reach the right audiences using the most effective channels.

5. What It Means: The FDA Will Be More Vocal In Disseminating Its Authoritative Views Through All Channels
As most anyone working in pharma marketing will attest to, part of the challenge that the industry faces is that its own efforts get lumped together with online miracle cure scams and generally unscrupulous advertisers and organizations who work outside of FDA guidelines and manage to get away with it. As the FDA takes a more vocal role through its strategic communications, this can translate into great benefits online for reputable pharma organizations who have their new products approved and are trying to spread that news to relevant populations as widely as possible.

THE BOTTOM LINE:
==================================

What this combination of the strategic priorities document and the recent admission that the social media guidelines will be delayed clearly points to is that we as pharma marketers need to stop praying for a magical guidance that will deliver the answer to all of our problems. Guidance may come in small pieces throughout 2011, but putting an entire effort on hold for the promise of clear rules is a bit like waiting to take the exit onto a highway until there are no cars on the road. You’ll be waiting a long time.

Instead, pharma marketing that promises to leverage social channels should voluntarily be transparent, useful, not overly promotional and serve a real need. Doing things right in this area doesn’t always mean looking for permission or waiting for someone else to do it first. Efforts launched in an ethical and non-manipulative way can and do work - and should be a part of your planning efforts for 2011, whether the social media guidelines from the FDA come in early 2011 or not.

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Tuesday, December 21, 2010

It’s The Social Media Time and Resources, Stupid!

Remember not so very long ago (probably just yesterday) when someone looking to really get involved in social media for business was told “It’s free so just go for it!” ? This usually came from a social media “expert / guru / ninja / maven / superstar / hero / stud / wizard /expert” (oops, already used that last one so I must be out of pathetic self-naming options).

This ‘expert’ actually didn’t realize that by promoting the medium as easy and free that no one would pay them to help them (hey, if there are any experts etc. etc. in finance who want to teach social media people what it means to be in business there is “gold in them thar hills” for sure). This phenomenon has created our current glut of social media ‘talent’ looking for a check which means they will say anything to get someone to sign up with them (look to the search marketing industry to see how well that has worked out).

But I digress. What the business world is finding out that despite the ‘low cost’ there is actually a very high cost to effectively be in the ‘social media for business’ game. Those who do this game for real know this already but for the poor Director of Marketing at XYZ Company the reality of what it takes is becoming very harsh very fast.

A survey conducted by R2Integrated (Internet marketing / social media service provider alert!) and reported by eMarketer shows that people trying to get into the social media game are getting a crash course in ‘there is no such thing as a social media free lunch’.

Looking at those results I wonder if there is not enough time and / or resources to do the other things listed like overcome skepticism of ROI, decide what platform, get executive buy-in, getting started and then learning the tools. Forget how much time it takes after you accomplish these things!

Once the social media marketing wannbe has cleared the hurdles stated above a curious thing happens. They realize that they still don’t’ have enough time and resources to do the social media marketing game effectively.

So what does this mean for the industry as a whole and the poor marketing executive for the upcoming year? I think it means that the social media industry needs to do a much better job of conveying the realities of the practice rather than promoting the fantasy of it. The social media “industry” is looking like a mirror image of its search marketing cousin that is rife with snakeoil salesmen and scam artists that it has lost credibility in the place it needs it most: the client side.

Stop with the hyperbole and the delusions that are more pitch than practical. Stop with the moving on to the next best thing that no one outside of the industry has heard about or understands and concentrate on the basics. Heck, these basics are still being hammered out so how in the world can the industry keep moving forward without collapsing the foundation of sand it has created?

As for the bewildered marketer? I would recommend a very serious assessment / audit process to start your 2011. Take the time to see exactly where your current strategies are working (so keep them) and not working (reassign the time and resources from dead spend to better areas). You may find that by trimming the excess marketing fat you can free up existing time and resources that were being wasted on the wrong activities. There, problem solved :-) .

Of course, nothing is that easy. However, if we all spend 2011 plowing forward without truly owning what has or has not been done to stabilize the art of social media we can call 2011 “The Year the Social Media Industry Shot Itself in the Foot by Promising Too Much Too Soon.”

Your take?

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OMG! That Was My Idea!

The other day I was out getting breakfast, then some guy and his wife picked up the news paper and saw an article on the main page for a new movies theater in the area that serves dinner, while you watch a movie. He starts yelling “That was my idea! That was my idea!“… then he got all flustered because someone actually took action on an idea he had. Guess what… it was JUST his idea, and he never took the necessary action to get it started anyway. Who succeed and whole failed in this scenario?

This happens all too many times in life and online business. We all think of these great ideas, then are either too busy, don’t have the necessary resources or know where to start to make things happen. That’s the difference between success and the failure to launch.

You don’t have to look far to find success, and it’s easy enough to come up with a new idea or invention that could change the world, or at the least… make you a few million. Something that seems as simple as an Angry Birds app for the iPhone generating a million dollars a month, or a college kid making a fun site to meet girls while in high school (ie: Facebook), not only changes their lives of the creators, but have become world wide phenomenons.

What are you missing out on by not putting your brilliant ideas into action? It doesn’t take much to outsource, invest in your own ideas or at least start mapping your plan out. There are actually many services in place just looking for your ideas, and they do the rest, while you get rewarded or can earn a royalty fee. There are whole businesses just based on taking consumer feedback and ideas, then building them into products and services.

- Got an idea for a cool tshirt? Get paid $2,500!

- Turn Your Ideas into a Real Product

- Submit an App Idea, Earn 25% Royalties

- Want to keep your idea safe? Patent your idea!

You may know the potential investment and requirements to put your idea into action… but what could you possibly be missing out on if you never try?

Monday, December 20, 2010

How Your Prospect’s Brain Becomes Your Secret Persuasion Partner

x-ray of human brain

What if you could have a secret ally working behind the scenes, steadily working to convince your ideal customer or client that you are absolutely the right person for her to choose?

Well, you can. One of the most potent marketing forces you can use in capturing, holding, and influencing the attention of your prospect’s brain is the power of consistency.

You can easily trip yourself up without meaning to. Many bloggers get bored with their message and think their prospective clients are, too. This can lead to the thought that you have to constantly reinvent yourself to liven things up. You think you should start to write new things, put out new opinions, shake things up a little.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

About the time you’re getting tired of being The Fish Pickling Guru, your prospects are only just getting used to it. They’re just starting to “get it” and really hear what you’re saying. They don’t want you to change it, especially if your message is a good fit for you and for them. Change it, and you risk losing the attention and influence you’ve gained so far.

You also risk confusing their brains. And you want their brains on your side.

The brain remembers relentlessly repeated messages

The brain can’t pay attention to everything and it doesn’t let everything in. It figures anything that is repeated constantly must be important, so it holds on to that information.

Consistent, emotionally-driven messages are remembered too, for the same reason: your brain thinks those messages must be important.

Advertisers know this. How many of us can still repeat commercial slogans from our childhoods when we can no longer remember our fourth-grade teacher’s name? That’s the power of repetition and consistency.

Some experts say that it takes a minimum of 7 to 9 impressions for direct mail to make an impact on you, and it can take up to 56 times for an ad to enter your conscious awareness. So even the most clever, catchy ad needs to be repeated so often it would certainly seem to most of us like it’s becoming boring.

But it hasn’t. It’s just starting to sink in.

The brain likes to group things

It assumes that elements having something in common go together. Your awareness may see a group of messages like this:

image of disordered figures

At the same time, your brain is trying to organize the information. It saves time and energy by processing things in groups, and is categorizing the messages like this:

image of figures in order

This is a really good reason why you want to be consistent — so that your clients’ brains can recognize your repeated messages and put them in the correct group “container” in their brains.

Every message you put out, they immediately group in the “Fish Pickling Guru” category, which means they have a steadily-growing supply of consistent messages that show what you have to say is important.

By sheer volume, those messages become more influential.

The brain likes to link things

The brain links new information with existing knowledge it already has stored, from the conscious to the subconscious, so it will pay attention faster to information it’s already used to.

Think of the Nike logo. Just by bringing up the image in your head, your brain thinks: There’s something familiar! I’ll let that enter my attention, and I’ll file that with my already large depository of Nike information.

This is why so many companies work so hard and spend so much on their branding. Inconsistent branding won’t encourage the brain to link one piece of information to another. Those messages wind up in different categories in your brain and become less influential.

Know your personal brand and make sure your messages stick with it to hold the attention of your prospect’s mind.

The brain values consistency

Familiar things are comforting to us. That’s why you always go back to the same restaurants even if it’s not your favorite food. It’s because you know what you’ll get — no surprises. As far as your brain is concerned, familiar things are safe. No danger, no worry. And that’s just what your brain wants.

Your consistency develops trust with your audience — we trust people who consistently behave in the manner we expect them to. You probably didn’t trust Uncle Eddie if he picked you up after school some days and not on others. On the other hand, you trusted your brother even if he was consistently a total pest, because you knew what to expect.

Building meaningful consistency takes time, but there’s one thing anyone can do. When you’re getting bored with your message, when you feel the urge to shake things up just to do something different, resist. Don’t throw it out just when it’s starting to work.

Being consistent can be one of your most powerful tools for growing your business — all by making an ally out of the human mind.

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