Hey Everyone!
This is an eBook I am working on for my company. It’s on Multi-Channel Marketing. Not done yet but coming along!!! I wanted to share it with you ….. and also give you a chance to get the entire ebook later this week at no cost: If you'd like a no cost copy of this book in it's entirety when it's done later this week, just email me. :) OR subscribe to my newsletter at: www.copywithresults.com
10-Easy Tips For Effective Multi-Channel Marketing
By Sandi Krakowski www.copywithresults.com
When you begin working your business online one of the biggest things you’ll need to watch out for is old news, old methods, old techniques for creating traffic, sales and increased profits. Before I share with you some of the most effective multi-channel tools you can use RIGHT NOW to build your business- I want to share with you 3 tips on what NOT to use because honestly it is old, outdated and going to cost you a lot of money.
3-Tips to save you money and time- DO NOT USE these services!
1. Google Adwords highest ranking keywords
2. A traffic generating service
3. A rented list
Listen up- when you first come online there are people waiting for you. Sadly, they aren’t your customers or clients- but rather they are those who will seek to make money off of some little things you might lack knowledge or understanding in. If you aren’t careful they could be things that aren’t going to make you any money.
Let me share with you three common teachings to avoid and what the truth is behind each one.
1. Google Adwords highest ranking keywords
The highest ranking keywords are not what will make you the quickest money- and using some ‘long tail keywords’ in your marketing can give you some amazing results with about 1/4th the budget. Essentially, the long tail is the hundreds to thousands of keywords and key phrases that a site is found for, yet rarely noticed or exploited. The principle of the Long Tail is the opposite of focusing on the top 10-20 keywords for marketing their sites. The top keyword concept is reinforced by agencies that contract to gain rankings for 10-20 terms, maybe 30. However, when studying the referrals from the search engines and the traffic they generate, those that focus on the top 10-20 terms may be missing the majority of their market.
The point of process of you will is this- do you want traffic or do you want targeted traffic that is not being used by a lot of people in your niche- in other words, do you want hungry clients? You see - in most studies, the success of most sites is from the hundreds or thousands of referrals outside of the most popular terms.
So if you gain traffic from long tail keywords and you gain enough popularity that others are referring to you, you will acquire better traffic at ¼ the cost than the top 10-20 search terms. J
2. A traffic generating service
Many times when you first come online you’ll begin to build your site, get your email up and running, get some graphics up, get some exposure and them BOOM- the biggest email of your life arrives. Right? No…. horribly wrong. The only reason this ad agency found you is the service provider you are using sold your information to them as a ‘lead’. So when they flatter you that you are doing ‘so great’ already and we can bring you the best results possible with our traffic generator services- please be smart and realize you most likely have been ‘had’. I have never EVER EVER seen a successful online business that got there because a traffic generating company came along and gave them some incredible service under $ 1500 and boom- they were making 6-figures. Can you imagine? Not gonna happen. Always remember this- the traffic generating sites need to make money too and they do so by claiming they can get you traffic. Remember, if they have enough people ‘buying’ traffic- they can buy some top keywords ($ 1000 x 20 clients).. And behold- you get traffic… BUT you get hardly any sales at all. There’s no marketing involved, no positioning, no SEO, no copywriting – just a lot of traffic purchased… you’ll see a lot of hits many times but NO SALES at all.
Avoid auto-traffic generating sites as well! The point is an auto surf traffic exchange cannot and will not build your business. If you open the auto surf program in your browser and walk away from your computer, then guess what? Everybody else is doing the same thing. Auto surfing violates the whole purpose of a self-service site traffic program is to bring traffic sure, but not real traffic. It’s just a machine surfing! In other words- not real! YOU EARN NOTHING! To have traffic and no sales means you are running a costly hobby! So avoid auto surf traffic exchanges!
3. A rented list
Back in 2003 when the Can-Spam laws were different, it was very costly to get traffic, people weren’t using blogs and renting a list might have been a great idea. Today however renting a list is most times a guaranteed waste of money.
If you know the person you are renting the list from and you KNOW it’s a viable way to create new customers or clients- sure rent a list. Rent SPACE (an ad!) on a list.
Sadly – with most small businesses that are buying a list to rent they are simply buying a list of older clients that are no longer active from a closed or sold or bankrupt company. Many such lists are old MLM lists, old MLM companies clients and worse yet, a list of people who used to have a business but failed, closed their account or didn’t want to do business any longer.
A person’s information is not longer protected (unless of course the list you enroll on says explicitly that they do NOT rent, sell or share their list!
So when you set out to create traffic and leads for your site, please, after 12 years of successfully making mistakes and profits in my businesses and those of my clients- take my advice.. DO NOT purchase a list or rent a list. Rather, buy space for an ad in a list.
Now that we have covered our bases of what NOT to do… here are the 10 Easy Tips to Using Multi-Channel Marketing for Increased Traffic AND Profits!
First of all- what is a multi-channel approach to marketing? Let me just be honest with you- I am going to give you a quick 5 minute overview. If you want more detail and process and such on Multi-Channel Marketing please order Mary Ellen Tribby and Michael Masterson’s book NOW on this topic. After having built several multi-HUNDRED million dollar companies, they know what they are talking about- and it will be the best $ 15 bucks you EVER spend for your business.
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Given the multitude of avenues that a business owner or marketer can use to access today's customers, the days when one could rely on a single channel to bring in great results and big profits are gone. Today's most successful campaigns take advantage of multi-channel marketing by offering customers multiple ways to buy. In Changing the Channel, authors Michael Masterson and MaryEllen Tribby provide readers with a detailed overview of multi-channel marketing and explain its benefits, pitfalls, and great potential for profits. They also offer advice on how readers can launch their own campaigns and make the best use of the results that each channel brings in. Multi-channel marketing is the most effective way to reach and retain customers. In targeting the same customers via direct mail, e-mail, Web banners, pay-per-click advertising, print ads, TV, radio, and more, business owners and marketers can both increase their number of sales and create more loyal customers. With this book as their guide, readers will quickly discover the power and profit potential of multi-channel marketing.
To attain and sustain success in today's dynamic business environment, it's no longer enough to be good at just one type of marketing. While you may already be making money using just one marketing channel, expanding into additional channels—especially the Internet—will help you attract prospective customers and increase your company's potential revenue. The fact is, if you're only using one channel, you're likely leaving millions of dollars on the table and in danger of losing the customers you already have.
This is pretty much the only referral I will give you in this eBook. Why? Because this book will answer A LOT of your questions and it will give you insight that a lot of marketers hope you don’t find out about.
What is Multi-Channel Marketing?
Multi-channel marketing simply put is using more than one ‘channel’ to market your product. GONE are the days when print media is the most effective way to marketing. GONE are the days when only using Google AdWords is the best way to go.
When I was building my kitchenware store in 1998 Google and Yahoo were the way to go. We spent on average $ 10k- 12k per month and we earned over $ 100,000 in revenue each month. Not bad. However… in today’s marketing with multi-channels I believe I could have easily doubled that and cut my expenses in HALF. That is how powerful multi-channels are.
Marketing, as we know it, has undergone a dramatic revolution. The days of one-size-fits-all mass marketing are rapidly disappearing, and in its place, organizations are implementing one-to-one Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions that personalize interaction with customers through both traditional and Internet channels. Smart marketers are moving aggressively to replace product-centric marketing efforts with MultiChannel Marketing, a customer-focused strategy that integrates and synchronizes customer interaction across vital customer touch points.
One consideration of multichannel marketing is that each channel reinforces the other. For example, information taken from sales on one channel is used to help the customer when making a purchase on another channel of the same vendor.
Multichannel marketing is marketing using many different marketing channels to reach a customer. In this sense, a channel might be a retail store, a web site, a mail order catalogue, or direct personal communications by letter, email or text message. The objective of the company doing the marketing is to make it easy for a consumer to buy from them in whatever way is most appropriate. To be effective multichannel marketing needs to be supported by good supply chain management systems, so that the details and prices of goods on offer are consistent across the different channels. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multichannel_Marketing
So Let’s Put It All Together!
Before you get all wigged out and think, “This is impossible how can I possibly do all of this?!” Let me remind you of two simple tips right from the beginning.
1. Whatever you use on one channel, you can use it again on another and on another, just edit a bit or even copy the same.. on still another and another channel
2. Rather than striving for perfection- seek to get results. Get the perfection down LATER after you being so see some traffic and profits roll in.
In the book I refer to above Mary Ellen makes it very easy to pull out some tips immediately to create some results quickly. I’ll share with you some of the things I have been using in various niches to create traffic, quality leads and PROFITS in my business during the last 5 years I have been in direct marketing, sales, copywriting and branding.
Let me first give you this tip: Look OUTSIDE of your current niche for the best practices you can find. Then when you find it- bring that to your industry. Look at what successful large companies are doing and bring THAT to your niche. When I build my marketing strategies I look at what $ 100 million dollar + companies are doing. Currently I am watching online live an event that is with the largest deliverability experts in the world. This involves email deliverability. YOU MUST stay up to speed on these things and listening to a bunch of internet marketers who copy each other isn’t going to cut it. I watch what LARGE firms are doing and then take it into my internet marketing career. If the New York Times is looking to send Text SMS messages to their subscribers, I should to – this is my point.
Tip #1: When looking for Multi-Channel approaches to your marketing more is not better.
The old method of marketing was to throw as many pieces of sticky goop on a wall (so to speak) and see what ‘stuck’. This is what you would then repeat. While this isn’t a bad approach, it’s not very strategic. I’d prefer to throw a few ‘sticky’ things out into the market and then watch it daily, hourly and adjust as I go. The internet is the biggest place to do this effectively and quickly.
So when you ‘throw’ something out there in Multi-Channel marketing rather than aiming to do 25 different methods in one week- shoot for 3 the first time you start out. Work those and see what occurs, then add from there. The reason I DON’T say throw a lot out at one time or better yet, because that is RARELY the problem with marketers- they RARELY have a problem throwing A LOT out at one time and tracking the results…. The REAL issue is throwing ANYTHING out there in the first place.
You see, the biggest thing a marketer can do is create a goal chart and make themselves feel important and smart. Right? WRONG. I have yet to see a goal chart or a business plan create income that paid off a mortgage. But the reason many marketers do this is because they have so many internal constraints holding them back, that they’ll do things that make them ‘feel’ good first.
The best thing you can do for your business within multi-channel marketing is do THREE THINGS and do them well and then build from there. I know personally , after building large teams in direct sales of thousands of people, after coaching large groups of people at companies, working NOW with a group of 2800+ dealers in a Direct Marketing company as the head of their marketing- most people won’t even do one thing. So you see, you are ahead of most by doing ONE and if you do three, you are WAY ahead……
Get real good at those three and add from there and I guarantee you’ll get results. You’ll at the very least get some good data and feedback to track and improve from. Even a total FLOP of a campaign tells you “Wrong niche!” “Wrong Audience” “Bad Sales copy” It tells you something… success leaves clues so pay attention!
Tip #2- Plug Into YouTube NOW.
Some of you just rolled your eyes, went to check email, do something else…. Because the thought of using YouTube and videotaping yourself makes you want to vomit… get over it. You don’t have to always video tape yourself to be on YouTube. I have created for myself and other companies’ videos of myself, of them, of their products, of their training system; of the back office of their companies’ website… you get my drift. YouTube is a no cost place to broadcast. So if everyone else in your niche is doing one thing- find something you can do that is unique.
YouTube is the TV of the internet age that everyone and I mean EVERYONE is watching. So give your audience ( ie your clients and customers if you didn’t realize it yet) something to watch! Be consistent! Do one video every week. Then do two videos every week. Then three, get to the point where you have 30 videos on your profile. Invite your audience to comment on your material, to give you feedback, to tell you what they want!
If you have an ounce of marketing sense in you this statement will excite you: You no longer have to go thru a survey service or Gallop poll to find out what your audience wants or likes or hates. You can ask them, even if you are 12 and run a successful business (which I have seen on Youtube!), yourself. ASK them… I guarantee you they will answer.
Now if you are full of yourself and you shield yourself from comments, criticism, feedback and complaints, and you can’t stand it when someone disagrees with you, you hate it when someone complains and you really just want to make money- go get a job handling numbers or something. Numbers don’t give feedback, they don’t give criticism. But people… my friends do. AND PEOPLE… my friends, are the ones who will buy or reject your product or service.
A wise marketer wants all the feedback they can get. The good, the bag, the disgustingly ugly comments that anyone has to say about their company are gold to them. WHY? Because their next six-figure promotion will solve that problem.
Tip #3- Solve a problem in the market and use Multi-Channel approaches to do it
All successful marketing, whether it is for a service or a product, solves a problem. If you can solve an URGENT and a PRESSING problem, you will have a fortune on your hands. However, if solving that problem means you want to do it your way, by your terms, on your means- and you don’t want anyone to tell you how to do it- you don’t want feedback? Get a job. You are not a marketer at all.
BUT if you can solve an urgent, pressing problem and you can do it in such a way that is so unique and backed by so much proof its ridiculous- and you can craft an offer with your solution that is irresistible… YOU have a gold mine on your hands. YOU REALLY DO.
(c) Sandi Krakowski, 2008, all rights reserved. If you'd like a no cost copy of this book in it's entirety when it's done later this week, just email me. :) OR subscribe to my newsletter at: www.copywithresults.com
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