Walt Goshert » Dan Kennedy

Hit The Links: Social Media Marketing Golf Club

Walt Goshert — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 04:58:22 +0000

Each Saturday, we’ll Hit the Links.

As your Marketing Caddy, I’ll share with you some of the best “Holes” I discovered during the past week stumbling around the “InterWebs” to help you Build Your Business Online.

Enjoy your Round!

Front Nine

Hole #1: Par 4 The Blogger’s Guide to Brain Surgery A mild Par 4 Opening Hole… Michael Martine explains in simple language how a business blog works.

Hole #2: Par4 George Vs. The Dragon In this brutal Par 4, Rick Reilly wakes you up to reality … Some days you just don’t feel up to the effort and working? Denver Nuggets Coach George Karl starts his day with 15 minutes of torture… then he goes to work.

Hole#3: Par 3 Whose Shoes Are You Wearing? A short, but tricky, Par 3 from Ken Mueller of Inkling Media. Social Media listening with a perspective from your customer’s view.

Hole #4: Par 5 Breaking the Scarcity Mentality: How to Afford Anything You Want A confidence-boosting Par 5 from Dave Navarro.

Hole #5: Par 3 The Difference Between Recipe and Restaurant Chris Brogan’s challenging long Par 3… it’s one thing to talk about social media, it’s another thing to DO it.

Hole # 6: Par 5 5 Easy Steps to Creating Reuseable Social Content Jay Baer’s guest post at Social Media Examiner… a short Par 5 on getting the most out of your Social Media Marketing Game.

Hole # 7: Par 4 Online Identity Calculator- make sense of your Google results Are you “Digitally Distinct”? Find out here.

Hole #8: Par 3 Improve Your Site’s Page Rank in 30 Seconds Brian Horn’s short lesson at DanKennedy.com on how to plug those Google Juice Leaks on your site.

Hole #9: Par 5 10 Dead Dudes Every Entrepreneur Should Follow (but, not on twitter) A fun (but enlightening) Par 5 from Jonathan Fields

Back Nine

Hole #10: Par 4 Content Creation Tools for the Average Person A meaty, straight-forward Par 4 to open up your Back-Side from Terry Dean

Hole #11 Par 3 The World As We Know It Is (Not) About to End Cool video find from Pamela Wilson at Big Design Systems

Hole #12 Par 4 When to Respond to Negative Reviews (and not) Lisa Barone delivers sound advice (as usual) on managing your online rep at SmallBusinessTrends.com

Hole #13 Par 5 Talk Biz News: What you really need to succeed online Yep, it’s an Opt-In, but every online marketing pro wants to tee it up with Paul Myers

Hole #14 Par 4 What the hell can social media do for me? From his island paradise small business in the Caribbean, Mark Hayward shares how he uses social media

Hole #15 Par 3 Entrepreneurs Question Value of Social Media … meanwhile at the Wall Street Journal…

Hole #16 Par 5 30 Valuable Lessons Learned Using Social Media for Small Business Mark Hayward again… this time at ProBlogger.net

Hole #17 Par 3 Is Social Media Worth Your Time? A quick blurb at Inc.com

Hole #18 Par 5 5 Ways to Use Social Media for Things You’re Already Doing Swing easy, let it fly… John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing brings you to the “House” with how to do more with less effort.

19th Hole: Lancaster Spring Home Show Franklin & Marshall College Follow Up with a pint of Belgian Pale Ale at Iron Hill Brewery

Have a Fantastic Weekend!

Photo Credit: Flickr

Attract Ideal Clients: Simple Marketing Secret

Walt Goshert — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:52:19 +0000

There’s so much confusion and just bad, self-serving, misinformation out there about marketing.

We’re not living in the Information Age… we’re smack in the middle of the Information “Overload” Age.

With that in mind, you must develop a fierce focus and the only way to do that is to start out with the end in mind.

When your mind is clear, you focus on the key impact areas with great intensity.

The idea, concept, and practice of the Ideal Client develops a laser sharp focus of exactly who your prospect is … and eliminates those that aren’t.

But identifying your Ideal Client is only one component part of your marketing picture.

Consider these two brilliant simplified views from two of today’s top marketing minds… and marketing “doers”.

Dan Kennedy, legendary small-business direct response marketing guru, explains marketing as:

“There are three components to marketing-for anything, anywhere, at any time, at any price, to anyone, under any conditions. Every individual loves to insist his business circumstances are somehow different. Not so. Every business on Earth, past or present, requires three things to prosper. They are not in sequential order, because they can’t be. One is no more important than the other. One does not necessarily precede the other, but you need all three in place simultaneously. Think of it as a three-legged stool. It can’t stand with any leg broken or missing. It needs all three. It’s a closed triangle. Each of the three components feeds the other two. If you will “marketing energy” flows laterally to and from each component, to and from the other two.

There’s only one way to get it right: Right Message–Right Market–Right Media.”

Mark Joyner, author of two best-selling marketing books, The Great Formula and The Irresistible Offer, shares these three- part concepts:

The Great Formula:
•    Create an Irresistible Offer.
•    Present it to a Thirsty Crowd.
•    Sell them a Second Glass.

Again, the focus here is to focus on who exactly, and where exactly, is your Thirsty Crowd-that Ideal Client prospect.

Also Joyner offers and states another three-step concept, brilliant in its simplicity:

There are three— and only three— ways to increase the revenue of any business endeavor:

1.-Get your message in front of more eyeballs.
2.- Get more money per eyeball
3.- Sell more products to your existing clients on the back-end.

The Secret.

“The secret of golf is to turn three shots into two.” -Bobby Jones

As a passionate golfer and marketer, I say:

“The secret of marketing is to turn two… clients, dollars,sales… into three.”

In both… your golf game, or your marketing game…

The secret is leverage.

Getting the most out of everything you do.

In golf, getting the most out of your game is less. Less strokes and lower scores. Scratch.

In marketing, getting the most out of your game is more. More clients, more dollars, more sales. Geometric growth.

Yet, many business owners focus 95% of their time and energy on the things that don’t fall into these basic Business-Building efforts.

Like the hack golfer,they’re busy pounding away with the driver on the range, rather than practicing chipping, pitching, bunker shots and putting… the place where you turn three shots into two in golf.

Focus your efforts on what works.

It forces everything else to fall away.

You see, it doesn’t matter how great your product or service is if you pitch it to the wrong market.

Imagine having a whole crowd of people thirsty… hungry for what you have, what you do.

Thirsty crowds are everywhere.

The first place to look is right inside your own business.

The first place to look and examine… and completely understand… is to analyze the work you’ve already done. This will give you the clues, the road-map to finding a Thirsty Crowd of prospects who want what you offer.

As Dan Kennedy states, the components feed each other. When you take time and effort to discover your Ideal Clients, suddenly you’ll understand how to get your message in front of more of the “right” eyeballs, and an added bonus… in many cases the result is more sales of products and services to your existing clients, and referrals from them too.

Finally, one more observation from a marketing expert to drive home exactly the importance of the Ideal Client idea:

The late Gary Halbert, a true modern-day marketing genius, poses this question:

“If you’re going to open a new hamburger stand in town, what is the one thing you would want most? Many people say the best burgers in town, a secret sauce, or great cook, or commanding name, logo, or character like Ronald McDonald.

Nope, the one thing I want is this: a Starving Crowd.”

Your first step in creating effective marketing is to find or develop a Starving Crowd, a Thirsty Crowd… to discover your “Right Market”… your Ideal Client prospect.

Who are YOUR Ideal Client prospects?

What is their hunger, their thirst?

Where can you find them?

Flickr Photo Credit: mikebaird

What Makes You Different? (myventurepad.com)
Internet Marketing Secrets That Stop Small Business Owners in Their Tracks (lazerpromotions.com)
Final Lessons Learned from One of the World’s Highest-Paid Copywriters (copyblogger.com)
What Small Business can Learn from Domino’s Pizza (myventurepad.com)
Innovation and Leadership in Small Business (wordsellinc.com)

Keep a Close Eye on Google…

Walt Goshert — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:57:47 +0000

… for Your Local Business Marketing

One guy I follow for marketing is Dan Kennedy. He’s described as ” provocative,irreverent, and sarcastic… but most important he’s effective.”

I’ll take effective all day long.

Yesterday, Bill Glazer, Dan’s business partner, greeted me with this email about the NEW Economy:

Welcome to the NEW Economy. It’s not like we shouldn’t
have seen this coming, but the old economy has been
SHATTERED… and it’s gone FOREVER!

This is GOOD NEWS for people who respond boldly,
creatively, intelligently, and responsibly. There are grand
and glorious opportunities, greater in scope, more POWERFUL
for wealth creation, and more accessible to smart
entrepreneurs like you… if you act QUICKLY.

In conjunction with the release of two NEW books about the
NEW Economy, Dan Kennedy has posted a NEW, FREE Online Blog
Video of a Q & A Workshop he recently held (actually 2
Workshops).

Click Here NOW to Discover HOW to Succeed in the NEW Economy

1. Not an Affiliate Link

2. Access to the Free Videos require an Opt-In

3. Dan DOES attempt to sell you his books and monthly newsletter here. Go ahead and buy if it makes sense, (I did) but make sure you pay CLOSE ATTENTION to what Dan does and how he does it… his sales process. Dan and Bill are Masters at Marketing and Sales SYSTEMS.

4. Carve out a couple hours to view/listen to the two Free Videos- priceless lessons in marketing and sales for local businesses.

5. Dan mentions nothing directly about Google.

Ok, so…

What the hell does Dan Kennedy, who mentions nothing about Google, got to do with Keeping an Eye on Google?

Well, first of all…

Dan’s approach is No B.S. Reality. Building from what IS. Leveraging what you have and making it better, no matter what the economic climate.

Dan’s huge takeaway in these two videos:

“The only asset you ever really control (in your business) and depend on is the relationship you have with your customer.”

In today’s NEW Economy, businesses who focus on growing this asset- the relationship with customers- rather than chasing sales transactions, will survive and thrive.

Businesses who are simply “ringing the register” with new sales transactions are gonna struggle to compete, both in the short-term and the long-haul.

Now, the insight about what this has to do with keeping an EYE on Google…

Look at Google’s business model.

They make their billions of dollars from selling in-context search advertising to businesses chasing sales transactions.

How do they market and sell?

Google uses the very same business model Dan Kennedy uses.

Google gives businesses tons of FREE tools to make you a customer first.

In addition to all the Freebies, Google Beta tests new programs constantly- with Google Buzz and Local Business Listing Enhancements two of their latest to hit the street. Because they’re Google, all the big users- the Google Influencers, Connectors, and Mavens- spread the word for them, helping them build customer relationships through others.

Genius.

Now the Million Dollar Question:

What’s your FREE?

What are you giving away, of tremendous value, to build customer relationship assets?

Are you constantly Beta-Testing new ideas and, products, and services with your market?

What are you doing to encourage your Connectors, Influencers, and Mavens to spread the word about you?

Photo Credit: Flick

Content Marketing is for Customers Too! (thecustomercollective.com)
Google May Not Be Evil, But It is Naughty By Nature! (marketingpilgrim.com)
Google Gives SMB Market Something to Look Forward To (marketingpilgrim.com)