Category: Letters From Dan

Tonite I got a chance to hear an accomplished, best selling author speak to us “social media folks” in Nashville. Scott Stratten, the author, owner and thinker of the ideas in UnMarketing, has a pretty strong grasp on what it means to be “present and authentic” in your own universe.

He spoke a bit about viral marketing, a bit about handling hecklers and even more about the perception and reality of your “image” across electronic wires. Despite all that good stuff, the one thing that struck me was his insight into “going viral”.  His experience tells him that throughout the history of time, the only things that have gone viral have been the things that struck an emotional chord.

Now here’s the crazy thing about that. Besides retweeting his great quotes (like “engagement is unscalable on an authentic level”), the thing that struck an emotional chord with me was a story he told us. After an unsettling discovery on Twitter, Scott sat on the sidelines for a couple days wondering how to handle the situation.

After words from a friend, do you know what got him back in the game?   Music.

Yep. Scott’s got a playlist that gets him pumped up and ready to go.  What a silly thing for me to connect with, eh? I mean you see football players and athlete’s like Lance Armstrong sporting the iPod earbuds all the time. Perhaps it’s because Scott’s not a professional athlete, or because we weren’t talking about sports. I honestly don’t know.

But I can tell you I have a playlist, too.  And the idea that his playlist brought him “back to life” mirrors the value I place in mine. Whether it was new schools growing up, the trepidation that comes just before a cross-country race or just low times, I’ve relied on my playlist to get me pumped up and back in the game, too.

Keep in mind that I went to hear Scott Stratten speak about UnMarketing, but what I walked away with was an appreciation for his humanity.  Scott was a great speaker, but just as he said in his “viral” insight, people pass on what they have an emotional tie to. While Scott spoke about the need to engage at the business, social and entertainment level – his anecdote about his playlist has me “spreading the word” now.

So be yourself, because it’s sometimes the little things that connect us – and keep us engaged.

[stextbox id=”grey”]

MY GET PUMPED PLAYLIST:

Go For It! – Joey B Ellis
Come Baby Come – K7
Boom Boom (Shake the Room) – Will Smith
Lose Yourself – Eminem (to which I really dig into these lyrics):

“So here I go, this is my shot.
Feet fail me not cause this may be the only opportunity that I got
You better lose yourself in the music, the moment
You own it, you better never let it go
You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow
This opportunity comes once in a lifetime yo”

[/stextbox]

When I meet with potential clients for the first time, they often ask how to get customers to their website.  I’ve come to realize it’s just not common knowledge for business owners. When you’re thinking about how to get paying customers in the front door – sending them somewhere else just isn’t typical.

But it should be!

So, ask yourself this “why do you want to know?”. That’s the first question. And the answer is ‘because . . . ”  Now, replace the elipsis with your reason. You want your customers to go to your website because. . . . what?   let’s brainstorm some ideas:

[stextbox id=”info” bgcolor=”9dbde5″]

a. you want them to buy more products there

b. you think they’ll use you more if they read your bio

c. you want them to get on your e-mail list

d.  you paid money for a website and you want someone to see it.

[/stextbox]

This is the first step in figuring out how to get your customers to your website. Without a reason, a goal or a purpose in mind – what is your return going to be from that traffic? And without a reason that benefits the customer – who’s going to take the time?

The key from moving them from the chairs in your restaurant to the pages of your website lies entirely on the benefit they are going to receive by doing so.  So let’s brainstorm some good reasons why you want customers to your site:

[stextbox id=”info” bgcolor=”#9dbde5″]

a. they’ll save money when they receive discounts and special offers unavailable elsewhere

b. they’ll save time not waiting in line when they receive “inside information” about upcoming offers before the general public knows.

c. they’ll be able to win free somethings by partaking in the fun contests

d. they’ll get questions answered sooner because of the active forum of employees, customers and fans

e. their next visit will be more enjoyable because of the good response and implementation rate the “web suggestion box” gets.

[/stextbox]

This list is entirely different from the first list because these are some possible benefits your customers will receive when they get there. The first list, and the one I hear most, is really more about you – not them. Now that your thinking cap is spinning around because this opens up so many ideas, here’s the nitty gritty ways to get it done.

First you now have a message, correct? Let’s start getting the word out about our message. How about adding the language to the bottom of the cash register receipt?  Perhaps a business card fish bowl (virtual or real) so you can reply to them with the message? Table Tents? The back of your business card? Billboards? Printed on your check-out bags?

Now that you have a message, do you think it will be hard to interject that into conversation? Add it as your e-mail footer? Put it on your answering machine? Is this message simple enough to send it via postcard? Direct phone calls? On the invoice itself?

What we do with the traffic once it gets to the website – well, that’s another post.  And now that you have a message – what we do with the traffic has just become the most important question.

The question of “how do we get our customers to our website”. . . I hope you feel the same way I do – that’s for novices. With a good message your customers appreciate,  you’ll be hard-pressed to stop coming up with ideas.

You know what’s interesting about a career in internet marketing? I don’t know anyone who is doing it and is unemployed. Nope, not a single person.

You may have to answer this question for me, because I just don’t know the answer, but back in the late 1980’s were there any C++ programmers who didn’t have jobs? Fortran? Basic? Like internet marketing now, I think there were more jobs open than people looking.

I believe there will be a day when internet marketing is no longer a career, but something as fundamental as knowing how to use QuickBooks, or how to do payroll. It will eventually become a necessity of doing business, successfully.

Despite some notable celebrities declaring the internet to be dead, it’s in fact in its infancy. I believe the iPad is the first application that is taking the internet to a new level. Perhaps that could be said about the iPod – but that was just a new application for your phone.  If you know anyone with an iPad, they’ll tell you that they do use the internet differently now.

Some day the internet and your TV will be one thing. You’ll be able to click on Regis Philbin’s tie and buy it directly from the company website that made it. You’ll be able to download Rachel Ray’s recipes directly to your stove top computer. And you’ll be able to access your fridge from the grocery store to make sure you actually do need milk.

The part that really makes internet marketing a good career choice is its ability to create income when you’re not employed. Affiliate marketing, pay per click ads, electronic products and even physical product sales are always at your fingertips.

Since companies hire internet marketing gurus to help increase their sales, the end of those consulting contracts means you just have more time to dedicate to your own websites, products and direct income. It’s a marketable skill you can use for others or yourself.

I don’t think “doing just to do” is the best way to learn the trade however. You can spend a lot of time learning lessons many have learned before you. Teaching yourself how to write effective copy, install autoresponders, build squeeze pages, create affiliate links and read html is a bit daunting.  I’d recommend you take a course that teaches you how to do “everything” with one site, so that you can take those lessons and use it for any site.

The one I recommend is the e-Learning course SBI puts out. It does take a little focus and some time, but do you really think you’re going to absorb it all in 3 days anyway? The best part about the e-Learning course is that it includes:

• The internet marketing course that is taught at Universities
• A Wordtracker Pro Keyword research account
• Keyword analysis tools
• A domain name of your own
• Hosting for your website
• Newsletter software
• Customer contact capture autoresponder software
• Complete integration with Social Marketing tools like Facebook
• Forums for in-depth question, case studies and learning
• A complete series of how-to’s, like how to make money from your site
• And more. . .all in video, audio and written format

It doesn’t get much better. So if you’re looking to make internet marketing a career, a second income or a way to escape your current job . . . PLEASE check out SBI’s e-Learning Course now by clicking this link:

SBI e-Learning Course

You’ll be glad you did, and you’ll learn more of what works in this short course than in two years training yourself.  If you’ve taken the course, please leave a comment and share your experience – otherwise, ask me about it and I’ll tell you more.

So Darren and I are putting together a video series called 10 Minute Traffic Tips. You could ask why I suppose, but I don’t think the answer is very sexy. Darren came up with the idea, well then I really liked the idea. So we decided to do it. Yep, that’s about it.

So at the NAMS conference, I thought I’d take advantage of the opportunity and shoot some video with website owners that  you don’t see in these kinds of tutorials. My goal was to find real website owners who were able to garner massive traffic to their sites. I wasn’t so interested in the likes of Willie Crawford and Lynn Terry – but not because they’re not interesting.

You might say they’re two of the most sought after interviews or relationships in internet marketing.  And they’re both sincere, genuine and interesting people whose success is hard to deny. But I really didn’t want to be another gawker, another coat tail. When you’ve attained success like that – how many interviews do you get asked to do?

I would like our series to be more about traffic tips and less about me trying to ride the tails of success to climb my own ladder. If our readers demand that, I’ll take that demand to them and show them with legitimacy, that our intentions are honorable and customer-driven.

Our series will feature some very high profile internet gurus because we all want that nugget, but the bulk will be the little guys who’ve amassed massive traffic out of the spotlight. When you’re not in the spotlight, your name doesn’t help your traffic – it must be gotten other ways.

Ashton Kutcher, for example, what can you learn from his “traffic methods” that really doesn’t boil down to star power? I’m not saying he’s not savvy. . . but I am saying how can his “conversion rate statistics” be translated into stats the Anyday Man can follow? How many no-names announced they wanted to beat Oprah to 1,000,000 followers? And then how many of them actually did?

So keep your eye out for announcements on our upcoming series. You’re going to learn things no other course has even touched. For example we’ve already interviewed someone who purposely created a video to go viral – and then amassed 60,000 actives in her database. How about someone else who’s mastered guest blog posting to the tune of 4,000 extra hits to her website the day any of her guest posts come out. We’ve also spoken with people who use SEO, affiliates, syndication and more.

It’s fascinating to do the interviews. Wait till you have 10 minutes to watch them.

Friday of NAMS 4 was a great day, perhaps the best first day of a NAMS Conference (Niche Affiliate Marketing System). I believe the bugs that were present during NAMS 1 were not only ironed out, but smoothed over with grace. This year I got a chance to speak in front of the group, but that didn’t prevent me from learning. 

As you know, each Friday I send out my “notes” from my various activities during the week.  If you don’t get my weekly notes, this is the kind of thing you’re missing:

NOTES FROM NAMS

I didn’t expect to learn much in the Social Media 101 for Beginners that Jeff Herring and Maritz Parra put on, but I attended it because I also don’t doubt their deep expertise. And that doubt proved fruitful – I came away with a page of notes.

Did you know that you can get your tweet feeds via SMS to your cell phone? Yep, Jeff and Maritza said if you send a text to 40404 with the message follow@yourtwittername, you’ll get the tweets to your phone.  That is awesome for small businesses. Imagine setting up a twitter account just to send out a weekly coupon, and then telling your customers to send that text so they can get the coupons. Very cool.

I also loved a couple of the cross-marketing strategies that they do with their social marketing profiles. Not only do they put the “follow me on Facebook” button on their profile pages, backgrounds and images, but Jeff even has a video on YouTube with Facebook showing on a computer behind him.  Check back soon, that discussion made me realize I need to go back and rebrand all my pages.  Good stuff.

Those were just a couple of the nuggets. Make sure you sign up for my Notes, I’ll make sure you get all the good stuff from my NAMS experience.

Learn More About the Niche Affiliate Marketing System Workshop (NAMS)

This week I had coffee with a friend, Jason Elkins. He’s doing a program he calls 100 cups of coffee in 100 days”. While his program is a relationship building program, it makes a great marketing program, too.

He and I spoke at length about our client’s, what we’re doing for them and how that’s working. Fortunately, though we’re both internet marketers, we do entirely different stuff – so it was a great learning experience. (If you’re interested in the ‘notes’ for that meeting, subscribe at the end of this post).

One thing that is clear is that no two clients deserve the same strategy, or should I say no two clients could be successful using the same strategy. And I’d be willing to pen even for similar companies in the same strip mall. The company’s goals, strengths and weaknesses change that strategy completely.

I was amazed at the vast array of things you can do on a Facebook Fan Page these days. Jason’s team have really come up with some great ideas and new functionality. I’ve been reluctant to suggest a Facebook Fan Page to my clients, but am now rethinking that.

My reluctance comes from seeing the great number of companies that have fan pages but no real reason to do so. Without a really good purpose, and one that brings people back to the site, they could become a liability without constant posting and social interaction.

I’ll put together my notes from our meeting expressing what we learned and how you doing these things for your business. No matter what you do, the goal has to be improvement to the bottom line. No questions about that. Whether the activity is exposure, branding, networking, relationship building, sales, customer service or technical help – make sure that you’re activity is supporting the ultimate goal.

What’s the goal of your business? And can you see the little things you do supporting that ultimate goal – no matter how minute.

I gotta tell ya, this blog comment magnet is the coolest tool I’ve seen in a long time. There are a lot of tools out there, and some of them are pretty ingenious. I love programs like Market Samurai and Traffic Geyser, and Firefox plug-ins like “Screen Capture Elite” and “Google Global”.

But seldom do I actually promote products. In fact, over the last 2 years I’ve only promoted 3 products. I did so for the P90X Beachbody folks for a while, but with all the informercials they didn’t really need any help.  And then I’ve been a huge fan of GoBrevity (which you can read about here) and SiteBuildit. Those are two great services.

But then today I came across the Maxblogpress Subscribers Magnet, which for some reason I call the blog magnet tool. This is a WordPress plugin that does the work of 3 other things and also does a few things that nothing else can do. I’m going to list out a few things it does, but I really want you to go to their site and see the video.

Just seeing it is enough.

So, should you enable these things, here’s what it can do:

• Add an opt-in floating light box to your site – with a time delay if you want. (Also available in aWeber).
• Add an opt-in form to your sidebar (which is available free with WordPress Plugin)
• Add a “subscribe me” button to the comment form at the end of each blog post (not sure if that’s available elsewhere)
• AUTOMATICALLY fills in the name and e-mail address of your visitors when they arrive at the site. That means they only have to press the “subscribe button”.
• Add an opt-in box to the beginning or end of every post
• Add a floating footer bar at the bottom of screen with newsletter opt-in form embedded
• Silently subscribe anyone that leaves a comment on your blog. They’ll then automatically get a “thank you for leaving a comment” e-mail, along with the “confirm your subscription button.
• Fully customize everything – and it works with AWeber, 1shopping cart and most other opt-in box providers.

I’m not sure if that’s enough or not. The plug-in costs $147, but now you can finally have an e-mail capture strategy, design and tool. Truly an amazing tool – one I’m proud to help promote.

I urge you to check out this sales page of theirs: http://danmorrismarketing.com/blogmagnet – and see for yourself. If you’re a local business and you’re driving traffic to your website, this is the best hands off method to help capture that traffic.

Check it out . . . and take a look at their form below.

This is it. You’ve come to the right place. The NAMS 6 Action Guide is complete.

Tonite I went to a Darryl Worley concert – for free. In fact, when my wife told me this morning that we had to go to the kids’ Vacation Bible School evening mixer, I was less than enthused. But when she told me the real Darryl Worley was going to be performing a live concert there – my eyes perked up. How could that be?

(The answer is simple – this is Tennessee) 🙂

So there we are in the parking lot of the church and Darryl Worley is playing under a tent. Following him are a few other acts – otherwise the entire event was pretty family focused and centered on food and kids games. But that’s not the point. (Although the idea of a huge music star playing at a local church “picnic” is pretty cool.)

The point is Darryl Worley and these other two acts had an incredible opportunity to send people to their website to get on their mailing list. Now Darryl Worley is not hurting for fans – so this is probably not something he would do, but for you or me this is Gold.

Whatever you are. . .a musician, magician, poet, speaker or even street performer this is something you should be doing. One thing that’s great about performing live is the visual experience that aids the audio. A song on the radio might not be too catchy, but hear it among hundreds of dancing fans and you’ve got a new experience. Well, that experience likes to be remembered.

People love capturing memories. So in that manner – record your public performance and offer it to the crowd for free if they go to your website and download it. And while they are there, make the give you their name and e-mail to get access to the file.  Imagine going to a concert in the park and being given the .mp3 recording of it for free. How cool.

These music artists who performed tonite may have created fans. But without the ability to reach those fans in the future – they’ve built nothing. The hope that people buy your album that comes out next fall is the same whether you gave a live concert or not. It’s still just hope. But get them on a list and you can tease them to death until you’ve built up enough anticipation they absolutely want to buy it.

If live events aren’t for the sole purpose of creating fans – then what are they for? And if you’re going into a live event without a plan to back-up that event – you may as well not go.

Have a moment when you could have used recorded the audio or video but didn’t? I’d love to hear about it. Leave a comment!

I look forward to the day that I have to come up with a logo like David Perdew is doing with his NAMS logo contest.  That makes me think of George Lucas and how cool it must be to walk through the store and see Star Wars stuff everywhere. At some point he was sitting on a couch wondering if the idea of Star Wars would ever make it. And now look. . .

So I jumped on the chance to put together a logo entry for the contest. I visited the official site for the contest and quickly realized that some people are really good at it. So here’s my contest entry and what I was trying to produce:

I think logos need to be dynamic – not in the Wonder Woman sense, but in the idea that they can change.  So I first wanted one that could change with the NAMS idea. What if it become strictly an on-line event at some point? What if it becomes a cruise event? Maybe even just a series of teleseminars? Or even all of the above?

I wanted a NAMS logo that could change with the wind.

Then I wanted one that represented online marketing. I toyed with the idea of the hub-and-spoke structure, something similar to the icon Twitter Grader uses. Then I flirted with David’s idea of building a site that makes $10/day and then starting on the next one – until you have 50. My thought process led nowhere.

Then finally I tried to come up with something that was common to all of that. And I ended up with the opt-in box. List building, newsletter sign ups and even my NAMS Action Guide come with an opt-in box. But more than that – to succeed you have to opt-in to the learning, to the time, to the commitment to the effort. No one is going to do it for you.

Success can not come to you, unless you first opt-in to the idea of it. So the idea is an opt-in box. There’s a spot for your name, and then a button to subscribe. In the case of the NAMS logo, there’s a spot for the event – and a button for succeed.

Simple really.

What I think would be cool is an animated logo on the site where different words fill in that area – which you could click to learn more about it.

Anyway, logos are cool. I look forward to the day my life needs a logo.

Related Posts:

• NAMS – A website owner’s workshop
• Lessons from NAMS
• After NAMS – Getting it done