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Mike
Higgins
Partner
Fusion
Corporate Finance
Independent
Corporate Finance Advice For Acquisitions,
Company Sales, Management Buyouts,
Management Buyins and Fundraising.
Specialism In Venture Capital and
Private Equity and Business Valuation
Many
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amaized by the quality, & value for
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Many
thanks again for your cooperation and input,
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[Corey]:
Is there anything really special and intriguing you
want to tell us about any of your businesses? Some gem
of information that you learned "the hard way" that
can help us all?
[Audri]:
We've tried just about everything - we've been doing
this for a very long time. So we've made just about
every mistake you can make. We learned a lot though.
(The only thing we haven't done is spamming - we were
two of the early pioneers against spam.)
Probably
the most important gem we learned the hard way is the
importance of testing and tracking. Every good Internet
marketer gives lip service to this, but few really do
it.
We did a
promotion test with one of our partners about two weeks
ago that generated about $165,000 in two weeks.
We tested six different promotions. The best one outpulled
the worst 3 to 1!
In this case
I guessed which one would work best, but I certainly
didn't guess the magnitude of the difference. We can
roll this out with much better results than we would
have gotten without testing.
It's not
at all unusual for one promotion to outpull another
by that big a margin. Sometimes all it takes to turn
a failing business into a raving success story is better
ad copy or headlines. You never know until you test.
[Corey]:
What do you consider to be the "formula" for success
online?
[Audri]:
I don't really believe there is any one magic bullet.
Internet promotion means doing 12 or 15 things well.
Of course, some things do work better than others. :)
There are
four main steps, with one important given: You have
to offer terrific products or services you are passionate
about and that customers truly want.
The basics
are:
Create an Internet
strategy that involves doing something you can't
do anywhere else.
Start simple. Create
a Web site that accomplishes your goals and that's
totally customer focused. (Most people say this,
but very few really do it.)
Promote it very actively
and effectively.
Test and track everything
and modify your program based on your results.
[Corey]:
Tell us about a success story from one or two of your
clients.
[Audri]:
One business owner who heard us speak at one of Jay
Abraham's "Ultimate Live Market Research Laboratory"
(ULMRL) talks told us a few months later that he had
implemented just a couple of the ideas from that talk
to his site and had generated an extra $500,000 of profit
in a few short months.
Another business
owner at the same talk (Muriel Hart - http://www.kitchen-classics.com/) has a gourmet
kitchen store. It had taken her three years to get the
first $1000 day in her retail store. It only took
her six weeks to do that on the Web, and her average
online order is twice her retail average!
Web based
orders accounted for 10% of her volume the last time
we checked, and she said they were "growing like mad."
She was so excited about her results that she sent us
a huge, gorgeous, handcrafted cherry, red oak and black
walnut cutting board, as well as a microcomputerized
Neuro Fuzzy Logic temperature controlled rice cooker
- an amazing way to make perfect rice every time - as
thank you gifts!
We get lots
of gifts like this - another client sent us a dozen
gorgeous roses earlier this week. I think this says
much more than testimonials - which of course we get
lots of as well. :)
[Corey]:
So what do you think people are missing most when it
comes to Internet marketing and promotion?
[Audri]:
Lots of things, unfortunately. Strategy that makes sense.
Focus. Figuring out what they want to accomplish. Just
doing it - getting going. Making it too complicated.
Compelling
headlines are very important. ("Bob's Home Page" is
not a compelling headline!) You have six seconds
to grab someone's attention or they're gone. Most sites
are really bad in this area.
A passion
for - and loving - your customers. Totally focusing
on your customers and benefiting them. It seems like
a lot of business people forget that the numbers they
see in their traffic logs (if they analyze their logs
at all!) represent real human beings.
Then the
usual - slow pages, poor navigation, sloppy design,
hard to use systems.
Not promoting
regularly and consistently - and not testing and tracking
- are probably the biggest. It takes some time, but
when it catches hold, it can build fast. If you don't
keep at it, you will fail.
[Corey]:
What are most people doing that limits their success
(in any of their businesses, whether they be online
or offline)?
[Audri]:
I've already mentioned not testing and tracking. Jim's
favorite saying is: "Don't spend a nickel on anything
if you can't track it."
Also, blindly
relying on search engines. Search engine placement is
the life-blood strategy for some types of business.
For example, those businesses where people would use
the Yellow Pages to find them. Another example is where
people would type a keyword into a search engine that
is used enough to generate significant traffic (but
not so often that the competition for that keyword makes
it uneconomical to get and maintain high placement).
The real
benefit of the search engines - which no one talks about
- is that you often can get qualified traffic that is
ready to buy. This is like when people go to the Yellow
Pages in the physical world. They are ready to buy.
However,
for many businesses, optimizing your search engine placement
just isn't worth it. It can be very time consuming and
can require a lot of resources. For many companies,
there are much better ways to invest their time and
money.
[Corey]:
A perfect lead in. Is there any Internet promotional
method that you feel is substantially more profitable
than all others?
[Audri]:
Yes. E-zines.
If you have
a business on the Web, you really should have an e-zine
to keep contact with your customers and visitors. We've
been advocating this for years. Now, there are so many
e-zines, but the advice still holds - you just have
to "nichify" more and execute better than you did three
years ago.
Next is "Tom
Sawyer marketing," - if done right. We coined the phrase
"Tom Sawyer Marketing" to cover the different ways you
can use to get other people to help you accomplish much
more than you could on your own. [It's from the scene
in "Tom Sawyer" where he gets all the other kids to
help him whitewash Aunt Polly's fence. There are some
great marketing examples in that scene. :) )
Affiliate
programs are essentially ongoing joint ventures, where
you pay only for results. When done right, these are
probably the best "Tom Sawyer" marketing techniques
available.
Then there
are one shot joint ventures, which can be a big help
in generating quick results, and a great way to open
doors for future business deals.
"Viral marketing"
techniques are also very powerful. These are basically
systems that promote your business in the process of
the customer's using your product or service.
The most
famous example is Hotmail. That little message at the
bottom of all those free email messages was the mechanism
that created the fastest growing online service ever.
And it resulted in Microsoft buying the service for
hundreds of millions of dollars.
That's an
interesting story. The founders of Hotmail had originally
approached a venture capital group for funding for another
project. The group decided to turn them down, but asked
if they had any other projects they were considering.
One of the founders mentioned casually that they had
been tinkering with an idea for free email services.
One of the
venture capital people suggested that they let the users
of the service promote it with those little text banners
you see in Hotmail messages. The rest is history. :)
[Corey]:
If you were starting a new business on the Internet,
in what order would you do what promotion to make the
most amount of money in the least amount of time...
on a budget of less than $3000?
[Audri]:
First, create an e-zine or email discussion list. It's
basically free. Subscribe to several in your field of
business, to see how they're formatted and to get a
view of several different approaches you can model as
appropriate. You can find resources for finding the
ones in your area of interest at our site, NETrageousResults.com.
You'll want
to choose a specific topic that will attract the people
who are the most likely prospects for your product,
of course. The more tightly focused, the better. Then
decide on a frequency for publishing. A good rule of
thumb is to decide what you feel you can realistically
do, and then publish about half that often. It always
takes longer than you think. ;-)
If I had
a bricks and mortar business, I'd first go to my current
customers. They're your best potential subscribers,
and the ones from whom you'll get the best results.
Write articles
for other e-zines, and include subscription information
for your own in the authors' credit at the end. Use
the announce lists and list with the e-zine directories.
Build your circulation to at least 1000. Then swap ads
with other publishers. This will help you to get to
a decent subscriber base fairly quickly.
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR: Corey Rudl is the owner of four highly
successful online businesses that attract more than 1.8
million visitors per month and generate over $6.6 million
each year. He is also the author of the #1 best-selling
Internet Marketing course online.
To
Find Out How To Market Your Business
Online CLICK
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