How to Grow Your Business by 50% During Recession
Posted by carlosdc in Internet Marketing for Small Business, SEO, Traffic on April 13th, 2009
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
I’m in the latest Rich Schefren’s program, coached by him, GPS (Grow Profits Systems). Perhaps one of the last ones in the next five years or so, according to him.
Last April 2nd we had a call with Rich, and I was humbly presenting my home work. Then I aked him how much one of his GPS students, Alex Jeffreys from the UK, made on his last December launch, and Rich said about $300,000. That was an impressive result for a launch that was born from the teachings of Rich Schefren and his GPS program.
At that point I remember that I made a business grow from a concerning recession situation, according to its owner, to a thriving 50% increase on business, just applying some of the large and deep knowledge Rich gave us on his amazing GPS program! The success of the Internet Marketing techniques I applied to it was so natural, strong, and obvious, that the owner is seriously considering to expand the business by opening a second location, in spite of the recession!
I’m amazed of the power of a good Internet Marketing teaching that goes far beyond of opportunism, and gives you the knowledge and tools to BUILD A SOUND AND WELL FOUNDED BUSINESS.
You must be wondering what did I do? I’ll elaborate on this and more soon.
Summary:
- Know the customers to the CORE Complex: their feelings and desires
- Give customers what THEY NEED
- Interact with visitors, prospects, and eventually with customers
- Use a blog wisely
- Have a good SEO, aimed towards customers needs
- Good use of social media and social bookmarking
But why I was able to have that success by, as I said before, applying so little?
The true is that I was working, applying what ever Rich Schefren was teaching, EVERY TIME he talked about it. I did not procrastinated, didn’t let the things for tomorrow, and little by little, in small size steps, I was building the foundation of the business success. No doubt, with the excellent guide of Rich.
Other very important point to mentioned is that I was in “the battle field” since 1998, almost the beginning of the internet, TAKING ACTION. I heard Rich saying numerous times: ” action creates clarity!’
When ever one of my GPS ‘”school mates” was asking Rich a question, and he felt ther was a luck of confidence to start a website, a luck of doing things, invariable he said: “it’s better to take action and do wrong fast, ( learn in the process and correct on the fly) that not do nothing”.
Rich’s GPS program is about finding the constrain that keeps you from getting to your goals, in your personal life, entrepreneur life, and in your business. It stirs your brain in such way the you start changing your thinking and finding opportunities and new ways to solve challenges and do things, you have never imagined before. It’s so powerful! Unbelievable!
will continue
Free SEO Analisys and Recomendations to the best 5 comments!
Posted by carlosdc in Internet Marketing for Small Business, SEO, Traffic on March 28th, 2009
I’m giving away, for a limited period of time, a SEO Analysis and Recommendations to the two most important pages of your site, for the two main keywords of each page, for FREE, to 5 people who leave the best MEANINGFUL comments to any of my three posts (a total of 15 give away SEO Analysis and Recommendations ), starting today, March 28, 2009.
Please read a post or two and leave a comment that reflects that you have read and processed the content of my post(s), so you did leave a meaningful comment related to that content.
It doesn’t have to be very long; 5 to 10 lines will do. The more lines the better; it will give you a better chance to win the SEO Analysis and Recommendations.
I’ will post winners, their sites and Analysis and Recommendations.
PLEASE, only one Name/e-mail entry per post.
Thank you
Carlos
A Website or a Blog Is Not a Guarantee of Traffic!
Posted by carlosdc in Internet Marketing for Small Business, Traffic on March 16th, 2009
The Importance of Bringing Traffic to Your Site or Blog
MOST people think that just having a website or a blog uo in the internet, is the beginning of fame and success.
MOST website and blog owners do not know that having a site or a blog does not guarantee any traffic.
People come to your site/blog if one or more of the following conditions are met:
- the website or blog have very good content AND very good SEO.
- the site/blog have exelent content AND many other sites/blogs link to it.
- traffic come from some kind of social media, like YouTube, Ezine articles, posts on other blogs, Twitter or Facebook if you are active there, contributing with great content .
- you have a large (e-mail) list and atract visitors to your site or blog.
- you already are a successful and popular business man/woman with many followers/customers.
- you expend some money on PPC and attract visitors with paid advertisement.
- and some more ways to BRING TRAFFIC to your blog/website.
MOST people wait for the glorious day they will be discivered overnight, and a crowd of raving fans will start to follow thwm, talking about them, creating buzz on the web.
The only way that could happen is with steady, focused, hard work!
(will continiue)
Internet Marketing for Small Business
Posted by carlosdc in Internet Marketing for Small Business, Traffic on March 8th, 2009
Do You Want To Grow Your Business Online Successfully?
If you are coming from my searchengineoptimization-usa.com site, you’ll remember I was telling you how did I get into Intermet Marketing, almost by “accident”. I thought that having a decent website in the first page of Google was all that you needed to be successful doing business/selling on the internet.
I was in for a big surprise!! and I don’t want you to believe that and make the same mistake!
Let’s go back tor the good stuff!
We are going to continue with THE MOST IMPORTANT first four questions that must be answered in any business if your business is going to grow and thrive, from the wisdom of Rich Schefren:
- where are you going to find your customers?
If your business is off line, some answers might be: newspaper/magazine advertisement, radio/TV/media advertisement, mail in brochures/catalogs, etc. If you have a website, some answers will be: good SEO so people can find me in the first page of Google; some kind of web media or social media; incoming links from othe websites; etc. - what products will you sell them first?
After your make your first sale to a prospect, and that become your first time customer, you have to think how to sell your her/him once more, twice more, etc. On the internet it is not like an off line business, after the customer walked away through the door, she/he is gone! - how much will you charge for it?
Did you know you can find out how much a prospect or customer is willing to pay for your high quality product? Surveys, analitics, and competitive intelligence will help you to find this out, even before your product is out in the market! - how will you convince them to buy?
Rich Schefren teaches about what he calls the USP, Unique Selling Proposition, and offer you prospect can not refuse.
And until you figure out those four questions, you really don’t have a business, a scalable business, a business that can grow.
I’ll elaborate on each one of the four questions above.
This is a very simple example, yet powerful model of an Internet Marketing model to attract prospects to your site:
You have a website and you need traffic. How do you bring traffic to your site? Paul Lambert from StomperNet Formula 5 says that a good analogy of an online business marketing model to bring traffic, is this:
Your business online is like a stool with some legs to support it. If it has one leg, let say just SEO, it will be very difficult to seat effectively and keeping your balance, unless you are a magician!
If your stool has two legs, it will be a little easier to seat on, but still not much secure. You need at least three legs to seat in a secure and comfortable way. Still he recommends to have at least 5 legs: think about it. If you seat in a 5 legged office chair, it is almost impossible to fall, even if you are shacked (by the ups and down of your market).
The 5 legs to bring traffic we are talking about are:
- SEO, search engine optimization; this is not only to optimize the code or meta tags of your site or blog, but apply other SEO technics as well.
- Incoming links: if you have great content, people eventually will link to your site. This brings a good word to Google, and increases your Google ranking.
- A blog; there is no better way to create great free content than writing good or great articles (pillar articles according to Yaro Starak original definition, see Pillar Articles by Yaro Starak).
- Social Media or Web 2.0. Buzzing news in social media sites like Face Book, and Twitter, spread like wild fire over the net.
- PPC or Pay Per Click. Great way to get good converting traffic instantly (if it is done properly!)
There are other ways, many others. This five are the most common and if well done, very powerful.
I almost forgot one of the most important!
6. e-mail list: promotions, reports, online catalogs, etc., through an autoresponder like Aweber, OneShopping Cart, Infusion software, etc. (those three are the most popular ones among internet marketing gurus and professional bloggers, like Rich Schefren (Strategic Profits), Andy Jenkins-Paul Lamberg (StomperNet), Mike Fillsame (butterfly marketing), Jeff Walker (Product Launch Formula), Frank Kern (Mass Control), Yaro Starak (entrepreneurs-journey.com), etc. I think I don’t have that many left!
Now, your question at this point is: “How do I managed to do ALL this?” (a solo enterpreneur or even an offline business just going online). Are you really ready for the million dollar answer?
Very simple: one step at the time!!! What do I mean by that? You have to take ONLY ONE of those 6 steps, and work on it until it’s FINISHED!!! Then tackle the next, and so on.
If you do not know the technical aspect of SEO, PPC campaigns, how to set up an e-mail autoresponder campaign, or how to get quality incoming links, just give it to an expert, or outsource it. It’s easier, faster, and less expensive. No overhead, which is very appealing in today’s economy.
If you do it your self, it might take a lot of your valuable time to learn, apply, and re-learn from your mistakes; which is OK.
Another very effective and important approach is to have an Internet person in your marketing department to handle the Internet Marketing. If your business is already successful off line, it means you have great marketers on staff. However, if you have even one employee in your business/company that is just paid to think and work on Internet marketing, some one who is an avid reader, somebody who loves the Internet, knows how to move around Twitter and Face Book, who is resourceful, who knows how to research and find what is needed in Google; that person will be able to multiply the effectivenesss of the whole marketingdepartment. This is another of Rich Schefren’s golden nuggets.
I understand and support the concept that it’s always better to be resourceful than looking for resources or some body who will give you a turn in key package, or “your internet marketing” in a silver plate. But now days, as an entrepreneur, our time is extremely valuable. We MUST focus on the activities and projects fro the highest ROI (Return On Investment). The person just described above, will be an asset to your business. It can be even a consultant, if you can not afford a new employee on today’s hard financial times.
You can go to Internet Marketing Gurus like Rich Schefren (my mentor and teacher), Frank Kern (Mass Control), Jeff Walker (Product Lunch Formula), etc. Rich Schefren is extremely busy growing his business, and the waiting line to get his personal advice (over the phone) may be a year; if you are the lucky one to get his attention, you will need to pay a minimum of $5,000 an hour of consultation (no kidding).
With Rich Schefren in his office, in Delray, Florida, 02-08-09
Internet marketers have learned from their own mistakes, but most of all from their brilliant ideas put into practice!
Now another question for you is: “where in the internet marketing am I?” ”what do I have?” what do I need?” ” what do I want?”
This are the two most common answers I get from small business, when I ask them the following questions:
Q: “Does your site has any traffic? visitors coming from Google or other sources?”
A: “I don’t know”
MOST websites do not have analitics, or metrics to measure the site performance:
- how many visitors come to your site?
- where are they coming from?
- how many unique visitors you have?
- what do your visitors do in your site/pages?
- what do they come for?
- if any, what is your site conversion rate? (how many buy vs how many land in your page)
- Demographics,
- how long do visitors stay in the site, on certain pages
- what do they do while in the site, what they read and/or click. This will tell you why you loose your visitors
Q: Do you sell from your site (on off line business that have a website)?
A: “Not really. We have some traffic. We’ve been waiting to sell for … months/years, and still waiting.”
Having some traffic does not guarantee you will sell.
—————————————————-
will continue!
Please, if you have any question regarding any of these subjects, leave a comment below with your questions., like these ones:
- What is the most burning question/situation you have about moving to online marketing?
- What do you need to know to grow your business online?
- Can my business be succesful online? I need your niche or product to answer that questionI’ll be back!
Carlos
Total Business Success Conference by Rich Schefren, GPS Program
Posted by carlosdc in Internet Marketing for Small Business on March 8th, 2009
How to Build a Succesful Business Online
I was invited to Rich Schefren’s “Total Business” Success Conference, as a member of his GPS Silver Program (Grow Profits System). It is an Internet Marketing Strategies program of the HIGHEST QUALITY you can ever imagine! Still going on for the GPS Silver members, as I write on this post 0n March 8th, 2009.
The knowledge that Rich Schefren conveys, teaches, and instills in us is just unavailable! All practical knowledge, ready to by used right now! Every thing backed up by Rich’s years of experience and knowledge in the Internet marketing arena. What called my attention the most is that through all his lectures, teachings, and talks, Rich mantians the highest ethics I could never imagine an Internet marketer would have! On his own words:
“If you’re the old style marketer that is relying on tricks and tactics, what you’ll find that as the Internet evolves, your slice will continue to get thinner and thinner as you get found out, as others report to other people what they can expect from in dealing with your company.” by Rich Schefren; stolen from one of his classes.
When Rich starts talking about Internet Marketing, he is AN OPEN BOOK. Rich Schefren can talk for hours about any Internet Marketing subject. He is just passioned about it. Some times a Q&A session on the GPS program could be as long as 8 HOURS! People asking all sort of questions, and he enjoying and passionate about the subject, answering with depth of knowledge, and an unbeatable patience. I never witness any one who ask Rich a question, that leaves empty handed. Even from the most simple or silly questions (some time mines!) he gives a lecture, golden nugget, master answer, that no body had ever imagine! I’ll talk about this down the post.
The night before my flight to get to Boca Raton, Florida, I was thinking: ” why I’m going through the trouble of flying, not sleeping or eating well, to this Internet marketing seminar? Will Rich deliver MORE than he’s already given to us on his amazing GPS program?” I got passed the point of no return by then! I just had to set my alarm clock to 4:00 am to catch my 6:15 am flight to Florida, and go to sleep.
I went with a humble attitude to learn as much as I can, network, and meet mind like people, fellow GPS members. Again, Rich Schfren and his profesional-amazing staff, over deliver once more! Marvelous things happen from the very start of my trip. I’ll just summarize them. While in the airport, LAX, waiting to board the plane, I was recording the Story page for a new Worldpress blog I just put up for a very successful alternative cancer clinic in Los Angeles area. A woman over heard my voice recording and asked me if I was a doctor. I explained to he that I was just working for that doctor/clinic website, helping them to move from a Web 1.o static-one way communication website, to an interactive one (Web 2.0), where they can enter in a “conversation” with their prospect patients and visitors. I’ll include a link to this blog at the end of this post (for you to see it, if you are interested), that made between $50,000 to $200,000 in just ONE MONTH, thanks to the just added interactivity with visitors.
On the plane I had time to catch up with a magazine from StomperNet, the gurus of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), from a program I am member of too. Andy Jenkins and his “faculty” are just amazing too, teaching cutting edge information/material of the most updated and advance SEO (sorry for the redundant terms, but I can’t help not using them all!). I learned just about every thing in that one magazine:
- SEO in a box: 10 advanced steps to do earch Engine Optimization on your website or blog
- Web 2.o or Social Media ten top sites and tips
- How to make your site stand out from the competition
- Syndication Profits; RRS feeds explain and advance use
- Precision Guided Page Rank and how to improve it for Google
- Search Engines searches explained and advance uses, for Google, Yahoo!, and MSN
- Link Magnets: how to get high quality incoming (or external) links
- Social Media survival kit: how to get around Face Book from the Internet Marketing point of view, with experts Mari Garza and Sharma Hyder. (I also have a beginners class to Twitter from Yaro Starak Become a Blogger program.)
- Branding in the internet and how effectively copy write (write for the web)
- E-mail campaigns Part II, deliverability
- BLOGGING! Another amazing 10 tips article about blogging
- Dealing with chargebacks, tailored for e-commerce (return policies in online business, how to minimize them)
- Audio for the internet, in a 5 steps fantastic article. Since I am electronic engineer and audio engineer by training, I really enjoyed this article
- Are the part of your business fully aligned? A powerful yet simple internet business plan, by prioritizing your every day tasks and projects
- and some more!
After devouring all that wonderful knowledge I landed in Florida. I got a call in Fort Lauderdale airport while in line to pick up my car. Since I was a totally focused on the up-coming conference, I really didn’t want to answer, but I did it just to be polite! with the idea to dismiss it ASAP. A young very well informed and sharp lady, asked my about helping her Women’s Footwear design company to improve their on line presence and marketing.
We talked for a while, and I realized once more of the raising need of help from small to medium business to move from non converting-one way communication sites, to an Web 2.o and marketing successful one.
When I came back from Florida, Rich Schefren’s “Total Business” Success Conference, three small business owners were waiting for me to help them to grow their business in the internet: a beauty supply store in Marina Del Rey, a prestigeous hair care products just online store, owner in Culver City, and a natural hair care products from Italy store in Tujunga, all in sunny California.
Picture taken at Rich Schefren’s office, in Delray Beach, Florida, during the “Total Business” Success Conference for the GPS Program members. In the picture, Rich Schefren and my self! Cool!
Rich Schfren and me, GPS Program, Boca Raton, Florida, February 6,7, and 8, 2009. At his office in Delray, Florida
The first evening at the Boca Raton Marriott was expend networking, meeting other GPS members, trying to make connection for future join ventures.
Saturday, the big day, intensive classes from 8:00 am to 8:00 pm. The different speakers from Strategic Profits, Rich Schefren’s company, cover the following topics:
- Rich opened the session with another master class entitled: “The Big Ideas Behind Entrepreneurial Success”, with down to earth and practical step to step and thinking process to improve your business. Rich does not give you everything on a silver plate ready to use. He teaches you the methods and strategies that will surely and certainly help YOU to figure it out by your self all you need to make your online business successful, with your own effort and thinking! This is far more valuable than any internet marketing program out there that tries to sell you the solution in a box.
- Write and Design E-Mails and Landing Pages, by professional copywriter Bob Bly (e-mail marketing)
- Be Ranked #1 on Google for Your Most Valuable Keyword(s). The Secrets of Dominating Organic Search,
by Strategic Profits staff, SEO expert Teddy Garcia (amazing class!!!)
- Screening Process for New Hires and Outsourcers, by Rich’s right hand and CEO Brin Johnson
- Email Copy Made Easy. How to Write Emails That Get Opened, by professional copywriter Jay White (e-mail campaigns/marketing)
- ”The Internet Marketing Retirement Plan”. Hot to Write and Sell Simple Information on the Internet, by professional copywriter Bob Bly (useful tips and techniques for any internet writing)
- Audio and Video for the web, by by Strategic Profits staff, Carlos, the one in the picture above!
Lots of side notes, and answers straight from the speakers!
After the energizing Saturday program, we had some more networking. I met such a wonderful people, that we all agreed we felt like a big family, united by Rich’s ethic, un-ending knowledge, and unconditional care about all of us, his clients, students, and friends!
Link to the alternative cancer treatment clinic blog that made between $50,000 to $200,000 in just ONE MONTH, thanks to the just added interactivity with visitors:
http://www.jameshaimbicher-md.org/vciblog/?p=1#comments
You may be wondering “what so special on that small and tiny blog?”. That is the point! So sinple and yet powerful! People needs some interaction, and that simple interaction made some visitors become clients, because their needs were met, just by answering their most important questions! Think about it and how you can do something similar in your site.
(will continue with the ”Total Business Seminar” for the GPS Program story)