Marketing

To most people, this was just another cool slap-on-the-back, atta-boy, feel-good, internet story-of-the-moment.

To me, it’s marketing 101 genius.

The story, that ran around the web, soaking up it’s 15 minutes of fame is about a typical high school kid, Connor Cordova. And how he posted 3 YouTube videos asking superhot Maxim pinup model and UFC ring girl Arianny Celeste to be his prom date.

Of course, it’s only a story because she said yes.

The Mechanics of Good Marketing

The 3 step marketing plan I’m going to share with you is actually pretty simple.

But to get to it we have to look at a few of the marketing gems in this story first. This gives us the foundation we need to really understand the plan.

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Barack Obama’s email list is worth half a billion dollars. Do I have your attention yet?

Every business needs to have a web strategy, and every web strategy needs to incorporate list building and email marketing. If you don’t, you’re missing a massive opportunity to engage and interact with your users … and to sell, presell, upsell, cross sell, and turn one time customers into repeat customers. You need a list.

In fact, good list building and email marketing is responsible for the lion’s share of online profits made by many Fortune 500 companies, web-trepreneurs, and affiliate marketers. It’s extremely powerful. In fact “list marketing” is so powerful that it takes shape in many forms; telemarketing, fax marketing, and direct mail marketing as well as email marketing.

Isn’t it just spam? The difference between spam and good email marketing is this: permission. It’s permission-based marketing when you ask users to subscribe and give them the option not to. And when your users can unsubscribe at any time, quickly and easily. And when you provide great value that fulfills their expectations.

Then, it’s a trusted connection. And it can be the foundation to a multi-million dollar business.

So to help you put your list building and email marketing strategy together, here’s a … well, a list … of resources where you can find the tools, software solutions, and strategies for building your lists and launching your email marketing campaigns …

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Most business books only teach half of what you need to know to start and run a successful business. And guess what? It’s the wrong half.

That’s right, you can learn how to set up a corporation, how to lease space, track inventory, and all the other things that cost you money in most business books. They teach the “buying” side of business. And very few books have much to say about the “selling” side. And selling is far more important. At least, it is if you want to create a successful business that makes money.

Jeffrey Gitomer’s Little Red Book of Selling IS that other half of business you need to know.

It’s a must-have book for any entrepreneur or business owner. And in it, Jeffrey outlines 12.5 (catchy huh?) principles to help you sell anything. Let’s take a look at them …

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If you’ve ever looked at ways to make money online, then you’ve probably heard of affiliate marketing. To boil it down; affiliate marketing is delivering internet users through SEO or paid advertising to a merchants website in order to gain a commission on a sale or some other action.

The internet makes it easy, which makes it very competitive … and so, not so easy. But affiliate marketing has been around a long, long time. Long before the internet was in full swing.

Here’s a true story about off-line affiliate marketing I think you’ll find entertaining and educational …

The Drunken Barber

Years ago, I met this dude who was a hair stylist. I can’t even remember his name but he was really hyper and had a real drinking problem. Just picture “You Don’t Mess with the Zohan” mixed with Mickey Rourke’s character in the movie “Barfly”.

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Effective advertising and marketing leads to sales, and sales lead to building a successful business. That simple equation tells us why successful businesses are always advertising.

Now wouldn’t it be great to get some free advertising to jumpstart your sales?

The Real Secret of Flyer Advertising

We all get flyers in the mail, and most newspapers have a nice collection of them sprinkled in between the pages of the paper. The most common flyers are the ones you see every week; from local home electronics and grocery stores offering up great deals for the week.

Here’s the big secret …

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I love movies. Always have. And every great movie, whether it’s a big Hollywood production or an indie cult classic starts with a great screenplay. The script is what attracts talent and investment, inspires genius, and ultimately just tells a great story worth watching.

And there’s a formula to storytelling that makes great movies great. A formula that never fails to rise to the challenge because it educates and entertains by grasping at the very roots of the human condition.

That formula is classical mythological story structure. And it’s allowed stories like Homer’s Odyssey to persevere for literally thousands of years. And you can play with the formula quite a bit. After all, it’s just a framework.

But there are some key ingredients you have to have to make a great screenplay. No matter what the genre, you’ll find that the best movies have these things. And the worst, don’t.

The Key Ingredients in Great Screenwriting

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Or maybe I should say the marketing of art …

I’ve been doing a lot of drawing lately – gearing up for an amateur painting contest with some friends. And this is all on the lo-fi, and by that I mean on canvas, not photoshop.

Anyway, I’ve also been studying some of history’s great masters to get some ideas on style and technique and I came across J W Waterhouse’s Hylas and the Nymphs. And my first thought was … ‘Man, that’s good marketing’!

So let’s take a look at this great classic work of art (pictured above) and see what it can teach us about marketing …

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The “when” is easy to answer. Always. This isn’t as obvious as it sounds because in practice, most businesses start marketing and advertising when they start up and then one single thing always happens that makes them stop …

Change.

It can be change for the better, or for the worse. But that change usually becomes the new focus. It’s either “Oh wow, we have all these orders to fill” or it’s “Oh no, things aren’t going as planned. We have to make some cuts”.

To keep a good thing rolling forward or to turn around a bad situation, you have to keep some focus on your marketing and advertising and translate all of it into sales. Here’s how to approach your advertising based on your situation …

1. Build your brand. Things are going great. You’ve got more business than you can handle so there’s no use wasting money on marketing right? Wrong. This is the time to build your brand.

When you build your brand you get customers coming to you. They’re coming to you because they know you and trust your brand. And when people are coming to you; when they want what you have, it’s a lot easier to charge more and increase your margins.

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The very nature of being an entrepreneur means you’re taking a bit of a shot in the dark with your business idea. You’re blazing a new trail. Going where (hopefully) no one else has gone before.

But you can make your startup a whole lot easier by following someone else’s trail in the beginning.

You Gotta Be a Prince Before You Become King

In the end, it’s that new territory that you discover and conquer that will make you the king in your industry. But you’ve got to start somewhere, and the best place to start is to follow the current kings around and learn from them.

No matter what you’re selling; products, services, affiliate marketing … there are already people and companies out there making an absolute killing in the market. Some of them spend millions of dollars develping packaging that sells, ad copy that stops you in your tracks, and websites that convert into sales.

Take advantage of that.

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