My Decision to Follow One “Teacher” for 2013

One of the decisions I’ve made for 2013 that I have been sticking with in terms of high marketing education is to follow one teacher. That’s been pretty hard to do because there are a lot of smart marketers that I come in contact with, that I would feel fortunate to learn from their experience. As is the case with anyone that you “follow”, you try to find people that have already accomplished what you’re looking to accomplish and do some of the things that they suggest.

However, I’m sure that if you’re reading this, you can relate to the scenario where there are so many people to listen to that you can easily start to lose perspective on what you really want to accomplish in your business. I decided to do something about that this year. Although I remain on the mailing lists of people that I respect and like to hear from, I’ve decided to follow the advice of one teacher.

How I Picked the One Person

One of the things that guided me in that decision was the fact that I had several high ticket information products by this gentleman that I had not touched over three years. I think that I’ve done a pretty good job of making purchases, since I’ve been involved in Internet marketing, of concepts that were timeless and that don’t go out of “style”.

I realize that can be a detriment sometimes because business does really change over time and there are things to be learned from every new scenario. For instance, mobile marketing did not appear on the radar in 2009 when I made most of my instructional purchases that I would consider be “big-ticket”.

But that said, I have focused my attention on Eben Pagan during this calendar year. Now for those of you who have purchased information products from me or have taken some recommendations from me you might say that this gentleman (Eben) isn’t necessarily relevant to our particular market. In other words, since most of the work that I’ve done online for the last three years has been with Internet marketing consultants, and Eben Pagan doesn’t fall into that sphere and therefore might be taking me down paths that wouldn’t be good for me or my (GainMindshare) community.

However, a friend of mine and mentor to some degree, Brian Sacks is very fond of saying that you need to “be very careful who you listen to”. I have taken that to heart ever since he said. It, and every time he repeats it. And so I’ve narrowed down the people that I’m going to listen to and take advice from during this calendar year. In order to simplify my life. And give me perspective on what I’m trying to accomplish.

How Pagan’s Teachings Help Me Accomplish My Goals

One of the things that I’m looking to do and be serious about 2013 is to create the kind of information products that would be valuable to small business owners here in my local area. I’ve listened to countless numbers of people tell me that this is not something that falls into viable market. I have heeded those warnings and decide to proceed anyway.

And one of the things that I know that Evan Pagan has done successfully is that he is built his business on providing the kind of information to people that really change their lives. And that is something that I’m dedicated to do in the small business space. I have done quite a bit of work with Internet Marketing consultants, but not the small business owners that they serve.

It’s my hope that Eben will be able to help me to do that as I go through all of the information products that I have from him. One of the things that I intend to do is share on this blog some of the things that I have learned from him that have impacted my life and my business.

Since part of the agreement that I’ve made with myself, is to implement everything that I’ve heard him say in his seminars and webinars, there is lots I could tell you about. One good thing that I can report to you is that a number of these things have directly increased my income. Therefore, I have no trouble saying that these are things that you could very easily using your own business or at the very be share with other people who are in business.

10 Things That Eben Pagan Has Helped Me Learn

So this week I’ll be sharing with you 10 things that I’ve learned that Eben Pagan has shared with me that have made an impact on my business and I’ll also share with you some of the things that I know he’s doing now that you might benefit from.

Also. In particular there is a new program that he’s doing called Accelerate that you may be interested in. You can get access to some free reports on what he’s doing here, that in my opinion are better than some of the paid products that you’ll be getting here and there in the business opportunity space. So you can look forward to my first post, which should be on Monday. I’ll be telling you one of the things that I’ve learned from Evan that’s made a difference to me.

Today is Saturday and I’m getting ready for Mother’s Day so there are only a few links to provide to you today. I had to miss yesterday because of a power outage here in Harrisburg. If you’re coming to this page from my e-mail the very first link is my post about the Mike Cooch webinar. It is probably one of the highest rated calls that we’ve ever done. If you’re an Internet Marketing Consultant, you WILL be able to use this in your business.

PLEASE SHARE this post with your friends in business and consulting!

How To Have Successful Sales Conversations With Mike Cooch

Google’s Report on DIY Shoppers that use Online Video for Decision Making

My product review of Facebook Royale By Bolaji O and Joshua Kwentoh

Enjoy today and (US) fellas…get ready for Mother’s Day!

This is only the first or second time that I have actually promoted a product of Bolaji and Joshua’s. As you know, I tend to stay away from courses and software. But I think that this is close enough to things I have recommended to you in the past. What I like most about this is that, he’s not telling you that you’re going to do use this course and make a million dollars a week from Tuesday. The other thing is that you don’t have to use this in place of what you’re already doing. If you’re looking for a way to give some value away and struggle with how to do that, both Bolaji and Joshua have given it to you here. So here is the product review.

Click Here To Get Access To FB Royale + Our Bonuses

FB Royale Video Product Review-WATCH THIS

FB Royale is being launched Friday May 10th at 3 PM EST. Here is my video review. By the time you read this, I may have already added by written review. But you can certainly start by watching my video review here. You’ll need to make sure to pick up this link on Friday at 3 PM EST.

Bonuses You’ll Download Immediately Upon Getting FB Royale

BONUS ONE: Watch Hidden local Prospects Appear With Secret Resource #1

BONUS TWO: Discover Even MORE Local Hidden Prospects Quickly With Secret Resource #2

BONUS THREE: Increase The Potency of Bolaji’s Method By 10X With This Simple Value Builder

FOUR: Graphics Tutorial Packages

Also Pick Up My Bonus For The OTO

Check Out The DEMO Video

Check Out This New Case Study From Joshua and Bolaji

Below I have listed some helpful articles and resources to help you build your business. I routinely find articles in my research and sometimes don’t have time to blog about them all. I am some what of a big picture person, so I will typically post those things on my trends site (under construction). But I do find some things that I will find that are practical.

If you’re doing Google Hangouts you’ll want to check out my post that I picked up on something from REELSEO. Also, I have added in a Free download that you Mobile Marketers will find helpful. In the future I will include something for Internet Marketers too. In any case, I hope you’ll enjoy today’s updates!

Research Findings

Google’s Perspective on Mobile Marketing and Stores

YouTube To Start Paid Channels

Six Success Factors For Building a Well Run Marketing Organization

Amazon is working on its own Smartphone

For Small Businesses

Google Provides A Way to Get People on Your Hangout

Help Us Find Out What’s On The Minds of Small Business Owners

Learn To Do Video at this Video Marketing Summit

Consultant’s Corner (Posts Especially Helpful To Marketing Consultants)

Product Review: FB Royale by Bolaji O and Joshua Kwentoh

Turn Your YouTube Videos Into Automated Webinars With A WordPress Plugin

Product Review: Mohammed’s Automated Webinar Product

Free Download for Marketing Consultants: Mobile Simulator Plugin

For Central Pennsylvania Business Owners and Consultants

Product and Resource Reviews

Special Offers From GainMindshare

The Next Book Project

For my next book project I decided to tackle marketing best practices. I’m going to be talking to marketing consultants and small business owners all over the world to find out how many of them are using some of the “must do” methods that are being touted in business publications and instructional books on advertising and promotion.

I Am Looking For Real Information About What Real Business Owners are Doing

Therefore, I will be reporting back to those of you who read this blog on a regular basis. I’m getting information to you on what real business owners are actually saying about what they’re doing every day. I want to be able to discern the difference between what consultants and advisers are saying and what real business owners are saying. I also hope to get a real handle on how many business owners are actually using the services of a marketing consultant or adviser.

Marketing Has Changed

I think this information is going to be useful as marketing strategies become more complex, and as the mediums start to multiply. If you think about it 10 years ago, a small business wouldn’t have had to concern themselves with SEO, social media and mobile marketing. However, businesses that ignore these things in today’s world, are in danger of leaving themselves irrelevant.

The question is, how much of this activity actually leads to small business success? Do businesses actually use some or all of these tactics? If they use all of them, is it undertaken by an in-house staff? Or is this done by a consulting professional?

I realize that not all of this information gathering will be totally scientific. I also understand the danger of basing one’s entire promotional strategy on this research that I’m doing. That said, most of these are questions that we all have and would like to really get our arms around if we want to see small businesses attain success.

Small Businesses Are On Their Own

At the same time, I also realize that now that small business is no longer in the limelight as a political football, their shouts can go unheralded underneath the noise of media and advertising from large corporate players. Small and independent businesses have had to be more creative, and nimble in getting the word out about their business in such a way that they develop relationships that last a lifetime.

Like You Live In A Small Town

While not every small business is located in a small town. The feeling that they need to create, in this environment of nameless and faceless business dealings needs to be able to give that kind of feeling if they want to stand out (while still delivering live Amazon).

In other words, if my intuition is right even though the Internet has given us access to be able to research everything imaginable in products and services, that information is now overwhelming us as consumers. And we want to come back now to those business owners and places that we know and trust. We want to be able to talk to someone and know that they’re going to get us what we really want and if things go sideways, they’ll help us to get things resolved.

Consumer Maturity Matters

Maturity as a consumer teaches you that even if you get a break in price, but you don’t have a human being on the other end that you’re not necessarily always getting a deal. Sometimes that takes one or two purchases, and other times it takes years of doing business online. Once you’ve purchased one product from a semi-shady dealer just because you got a phenomenal deal, and you come back and realize that you probably should have paid a little more from somebody reputable you then get it. And as online are purchasing gets to be more mature. I think people are starting to get.

The Research

So that comes back to my research. What are small business is doing that’s working? That’s always been the theme of my radio show. And to some degree it is been the driving force behind the services that I provide to marketing consultants. What are small businesses doing that actually works?

The Independent Business Marketing Bible Series

I also understand that by doing this kind of research that does not necessarily mean that everything that people are doing that “works” for them is the best way to do things. Many of my friends and associates are some of the smartest and best marketing consultants on the planet. As a matter fact, the first four volumes of the Independent Business Marketing Bible were with some of those consultants. I’m adding a shameless plug for those four books that are on Kindle that if you haven’t read them. The people who write chapters in them know what the heck they’re talking about when it comes to small business marketing and you would be benefit greatly by checking them out.

What My Consultant Friends Tell Me

These consultants would say to me that not every practice, being undertaken by businesses leads to the most cost effective way of marketing their business. And my experience would tell me that I would agree with that.

But they’ll will know then what to measure their actions against with this information. They’ll know who they’re talking to when they actually meet small business owners face to face. Again what I admire about these folks is that they are in the trenches working with real small business owners to increase their profits. In today’s environment of constant self-promotion as the “advocates”, “saviors” and “champions” of small business, nothing else could be nobler.

A New Small Business Research Question on A Weekly Basis

So each week I will be giving the small business community a new question. And I hope that what you’ll do is share this with the small business owners that you know. It’ll be a simple question as to whether or not they are using the practice that I’m asking them about and whether it leads to some success.

For instance this week I’ll be asking about the practice of using a USP. It’ll be a simple question, open ended as well as well as checking off a box. For those that have time, I hope that they’ll take a few minutes and jot down a few things that would help us to be able to collate our responses and really get good information about how useful each practice is.

For those who get the question and are actually part of the consultant class, I hope that what they’ll do is to consider what they’re actually using with their clients and customers. Is this the kind of thing that is useful? Does it actually work? Or is it something that is just talked about but not really used in an effort to get more profit.

Let’s Play 60 Questions

Thus far I have at least 60 questions and will be using in order to update a new volume of the independent business marketing Bible on an annual basis. So, where there will be practices that we know that companies are no longer using will scrap the question. But hopefully each successive year will get better and better information.

My Passion

I guess you could say that this information is being “crowd sourced” and I am looking forward to the responses. If you know my story at all, you know, that I started my career as in a commercial bank and have been curious about small business ever since I got started out of college.

I’ve never been able to quite put my finger on what I was interested in, but it always seemed to revolve around the small business owner and what they were doing to be more profitable and contribute to society. I now consider myself among their ranks, and at the same time I am their advocate and their resource person.

Here in Central Pennsylvania. I’m hoping to build the largest and most effective free advertising and promotional platform for business owners located within a 50 mile radius of my home city of Harrisburg.

Harrisburg, PA

You may have already realized that Harrisburg has some dubious distinction and is on the verge of bankruptcy. That understood, I am committed to helping small business owners to maximize their potential here and to do what they can to make Harrisburg and the Capital region, the best possible place that it can be.

You’ll be able to benefit whether or not you’re a small business owner here in this area or if your consultant anyplace in the world. This information will help all of us to do a better job of being good about getting the information to the people that actually buy our products and services. And with that I look forward to giving you the first question.

Auto Webinar Press Review

I’m taking a short break from writing and editing to discuss offline listbuilding.

List Building…Who Does It?

I think it’s interesting that when I talk to a number of off-line marketers and information product, reader’s, there don’t seem to be many concrete solutions as to how to do list-building. If you think about it, outside of off-line marketing…list building is THE primary thing. I’ve seen a number of information products, as you have too, on how to prospect and “get” clients.

The Money is In the List, Right?

But if you came to off-line marketing in the way that I did, you probably came through learning Internet Marketing. And what is it that we have heard since the beginning? We heard that the money is in the list. But as of yet I have not seen anyone in our sphere really talk about list building to a great extent.

Admittedly, I don’t get around much. So it could be that someone really knows how to do it and has shown other off-line marketers and I have missed it. So I think it’s just fair to say, rather than no one is teaching it AND that I have not seen a lot of discussion on it. I’ve seen just about everything else.

Not Everyone is Ready To Buy

And it would make sense to me that the key to being able to sell to off-line business owners is to do so with a drip feed system to contact. My friend Steve Rosenbaum is very passionate (and right) about the fact that most of the people who come to you aren’t ready to buy. The question is then how do you continue to discuss with them the keys to marketing their business.

And so while I’ve seen a number of off-line marketers with big lists of other off-line marketers, I have not seen a number of off-line marketers with big lists of business owners. Or if they have them. They’re not talking about it.

Auto-Webinar Press

So that brings me to this product: Auto-WebinarPress. I sent one e-mail to the GainMindshare Community about it before, and I don’t think I did a good job of really showing it in terms of what it really is and what it does. I think I treated it like any other affiliate promotion, and send it out with a link suggesting that you take a look at the sales page and by.

Much Less Than Evergreen Business Systems

That really doesn’t do this automated webinar product justice. Of course, I did stress the fact that if you were to go out and buy a similar product called Evergreen Business Systems, you would pay about $500. But there’s more to looking at what Mohammed Ali as here.

Showing You Some Of This

So I’m going to take a few minutes and actually show it to you. At some point I’ll put together a video doing the same thing, but for now you can take a look at this post at the things that might interest you most.

What I like about this product, more than anything else is it will help you to do list building. Whether you choose to run pay per click traffic to your auto webinar, or you choose to use Facebook traffic. I think that the opt in pages that Mohammed has, associated with this webinar are attractive enough and field tested enough in order to drop prospects to give their name and e-mail address.

The other thing about the auto webinar system is that he has it in WordPress. And that is one thing that I think I like a lot about this. The interface is easy to use, and accessible because you don’t have to figure out how to put up a separate site in order to make it work.

The other thing is that it doesn’t require an ongoing service. There is a great service, called Stealth Seminar that I have had it once, during my time in Internet marketing. I think it does a great job, and is a premium service, if that’s what you want. However, this webinar system by Mohammed Ali does a good enough job of getting people to opt into your list, and to give you all of the features that automate webinars give you.

One of the things that I always look for in software, is evidence that it’s going to be updated. I want to make sure that if I’m going to use it that at the very least, the developer is going to make the pretense of keeping it up. Those of us who have been the off-line space any length of time, can probably count on one hand the number of pieces of software that continue to work beyond the first year in which it’s being purchased.

I recently received this e-mail from Mohammed. And in it, you can see that he’s got a number of things that he is updating and changing according to the request of his users. I think that the users are doing a good job of trying to adapt his webinar system to both the online and off-line space.

If I take you inside of the panel you’ll see a paint by number system for you to operate. It’s almost impossible, to mess this thing up.

You other thing about what Mohammed has here is that he allows you to do you to do YouTube. Therefore, you don’t have to have a lot of fancy hosting in order to run your auto webinar. If you can get your video uploaded to YouTube, then you can have it, a webinar that runs all the time.

One of the updates that Mohammed recently sent out was one where he is working or actually has already included to get the YouTube video to autoplay. This is fantastic because if you already have my local video mogul, you already know how to put external links in your video. That means that while your auto webinar is playing you can bring a call to action that will be clickable to the website where you want your visitors to go.

Since I use Aweber, I’m happy that he has Aweber Integration listed here. But he also has MailChimp, Infusionsoft and other major autoresponders nicely integrated. I’ve got a little bit of confidence here that this software is going to be a winner and will eventually have to go up in price because of the number of features he updates.

In short, I think this is worth a second look if you haven’t considered it already for your off-line business. Now the webinar software is NOT going to magically build your list. But the way you would use this is to set up a number of automated webinars that literally give people the information that you know they want as business owners and then you begin to drive them to the Opt-In Page. By giving them a call to action in order to sign up for your list, that’s a lot less intimidating than trying to get them to buy from you, the very first time you meet them.

What I like most about this plug-in, is that you can use it on unlimited sites. That means that you can provide your customer with a way to build their list. You can literally help them put together a webinar that will attract their customers and clients. I think a very easy way to do that would be to set up an automated webinar, answering one of the 20 frequently asked questions that your customer gets, and then running Facebook ads or PPC traffic to it.

So I think that the most appropriate bonus, even though I don’t want it cheapen this by putting a bunch of digital products in here that you’re not going to use, I’m going to add some information here on doing Pay Per Click as well as Facebook Ads. Although these products will help you at the very least to get started by setting up your webinar and putting up some ads and starting to get some traffic to it. And of course you can do the same thing for your clients.

I actually think it would be more impressive for you to do this for your client, than it would be for yourself. Although list building is definitely something that is at a premium. If you know how to build a list in your local area, it sounds like you’ll be one of the minority. With all due respect to myself and other product creators, it’s much more important that you build your list of small business owners than you remaining on mine or any other off-line marketers/trainers list.

That said, here is the link to Mohammed’s product. I did not get the OTO, although you may see a need to get it. He’s covering how to get traffic to the actual webinar. To be honest I don’t know how relevant is going to be to the off-line space. But if you decide to get it, and you find out please let me know. The plug-in is more than enough for you to work with immediately. You could put this plug-in into your live website set up a capture page and webinar, and literally begin running ads as soon as you get.

And as for these reasons that I think this is well worth your time, even if you took a look at it before and decided, well, that’s not for me.

Okay well my break from writing is now over, and I’ve got to get back to it. But take a look at this and get it before he raises the price on this. I’m not saying that to you because I’m trying to play some kind of “false scarcity trick”. I’m saying that because I’m looking at the updates that he’s doing, and pretty soon it’s going to get to be to the point where it’ll only make sense for him to keep supporting the product by raising the price.

This guy has got to raise the price in order to keep the high level of quality that he has. That’s one saying you should consider getting it now.

Onward/

Make Your Videos Extra Helpful

For some of you this video maybe a little advanced, but if you been creating video for your business, any length of time, you will find this helpful. What we’re doing is we are giving the viewer some additional information in our video. We’re giving them links that they will find helpful to continue watching more of our videos or to get information that they can immediately use from the video.

In other words, if we really want your viewer to visit a website, it is a good idea to actually give them the link in the video, while you’re discussing subject matter. But there is something that you’ll need to think about when you do that.

New: Annotations for External Websites

For the first time in a long time YouTube has given its creators the ability to send viewers to their external website. At the same time one of the key ranking factors for videos is time watched on YouTube.

Therefore, you need to keep things in balance as to whether or not it’s going to be worth it for you to have a video where people are watching and constantly clicking away to an external website. Because the more that they do that, the more that they are actually acting against your “time watched as a ranking factor” on YouTube.

How to Make “Time Watched” As a Ranking Factor Work for You

However, one of the things that I think will be helpful to you is that if you have a video that engages people all the way to the end. That means pretty much that you’ll also get rewarded if someone starts watching your video, and they don’t leave it (before it’s finished) it in order to go do something else.

So the key to good video creation is to give the user enough information that they will find your videos useful. So don’t put annotations in your video just for the sake of putting them there. In addition to this, if you’re going to do affiliate promotions, try to send only the best and highest quality affiliate promotions in your videos.

Some of What I Think YouTube Is Doing

I’m going to step out there and say….In this case and say that what YouTube is doing is evolving.

What you don’t want to do is to create videos just for the sake of your affiliate promotions. I realize that that’s already a practice, but I seriously think that this is going to get cleaned up by YouTube at some point. You want to make sure that you are found doing the right thing in getting people value.

The other part about this, is that people can always flag your videos and it seems that the YouTube community has some aversion to affiliate promotions. I think that is your video gets flagged enough, that this is the kind of thing that you’ll end up having to send e-mails and explanations to YouTube about what you’re doing.

Getting Your Channel Shut Down

In my experience they have always shut down your channel first and asked questions later. So as you begin your journey with annotations make sure that they’re helpful to the user. Make sure that when you can, your annotations direct people to other videos because YouTube likes that.

And I believe is that you always want to use things that help YouTube in their goals, so that they will help you in words. You want YouTube to like your videos and to want to show it to other people.

Most of the small business owners I know are quite adamant about the fact that they could really use some additional staff. Sometimes a staff might come in the form of a freelancer/outsourcer. Or the help might come in the form of part-time employee.

The Truth About Hiring Additional Staff

The truth about getting additional help is that typically you can’t necessarily afford to hire

everyone that you actually need in order to provide a great customer experience. Also, when they get to be proficient at what they do, it’s difficult to continue to compensate them at the level of their performance. They’re then able to go and find someone that will get closer to they’re actually worth.

My Question About Additional Staffing for Small Business Owners

I have an interesting question for those of you that are reading this article. You’ve probably heard that there’s a debate going on about whether or not big companies should use interns in order to build their businesses. Because the difficult economy, people are asking the question as to whether or not interns should be willing to work for free or whether or not they should be willing to work for a decent wage.

I’m not even going to attempt to try to answer that question.

The question that I would ask you as a small business owner, is this: what would you do with an intern if they came to work at your location? In other words, what projects would you have them work on? Is there something that you could that would literally grow your business, if you had an intern to work for you?

What Kind of Projects Can An Intern Work on In Your Business

Would you have an intern do all of your social media, would you have them investigate crowd funding sources? Or would you have them learn and do search engine optimization, so that you would be likely to have someone on staff doing it for you? Of course I’m talking about marketing right now but you could probably think of any number of tasks that you would have an intern do in your business.

Why This Question Matters to Me

In my upcoming book, I’m suggesting that many of the marketing tasks that companies have that they don’t necessarily have the money to pay someone to do, they need to consider taking on someone that can learn how to market their business and do so for the experience it provides. Upon getting the additional growth that would come with being better at marketing their business, they should be willing to provide some compensation to the person they came to help them to do their daily tasks that at marketing requires.

“That Je Ne Sais Quoi”

I haven’t figured out exactly what you would call this concept. My first thought would be to call it a marketing apprentice. That’s a little too formal and probably isn’t sexy enough to sell. But I think you understand my point. Most of us could probably do a better job of marketing are business if we could do all of the tasks that were required of us to take advantage of avenues it did require upfront cost.

Marketing Tasks For An Intern?

We could probably do more videos. We could probably do more social media (I mentioned that before). We could probably write more press releases. And we could probably do more to position ourselves as an expert with local media. There are just a lot of things that we could do a better job of if we had someone dedicated to that task.

That’s not to say that you’re not doing your marketing now. Most of us do what we know to do and we leave the rest for another day. What I’m suggesting you is if you had someone working with you, perhaps you could do more of those things to bring growth to your business fast.

So I come back to this question. What would you do with an intern? An answer my question, I want you to be specific to marketing? I know that you could probably have someone do a little more cleaning in your business. Or you might be able to have someone file your paperwork.

The Stuff That Matters

The fact of the matter is none of those things are going to grow your business. So think through what you would actually have someone do on a daily basis that isn’t getting done. And right in the common area what you would like to see. I’ll be using your responses in my upcoming book so I’m interested in your real life commentary on what your thoughts are about what an intern could mean to the marketing of your business