Who is in Charge of Your Marketing?

Are you in charge of your online marketing or are you leaving it to some third party?

I’m a big fan of Dan Kennedy’s marketing tips and when I first started online, I learnt some valuable lessons from him.  The one that really stuck in my mind is “be in charge of marketing your business.”

But what exactly does Dan Kennedy mean because if you’re a technophobe right, you don’t want to get your hands dirty or tied with website building, graphics or search engine optimization.

Well, the good news is, this isn’t what Dan Kennedy was referring to.

And, I’m going to use a real life situation here to explain my point and I hope after you read this short case study, you’ll be motivated to take control of your marketing.

I was speaking to someone a few weeks back who wanted to put some affiliate links on their site, but they had zero content on their site.  Naturally, I explained that putting up a banner with the affiliate link would be insufficient because to make money, they’d need traffic.

In short, it transpired that despite the fact that this person had been coached for 2 years, they didn’t have a clue about the process of marketing.

This person had thrown their hands up in the air saying they were not technical and in doing so had abdicated (and I do mean abdicated) their entire process of marketing.

Now, you’re probably asking the question “well what about her coach?”  Good question!  But here’s the rub … this person has changed their business model and online business so many times that I was not surprised that two years later, they had no content, no traffic and no business.

To me, it felt that in “deciding” that they were no good technically, they had outsourced everything technical (which is good) but also seemed to have adopted a mentality that you could make money online without traffic and without content.

Needless to say, I was very straight with them and suggested they go sign up to Ed Dales 30 day challenge so they could learn the process of marketing.

Even if you don’t “do” the techie stuff yourself, you need to understand that like anything else, there is a process to marketing.

If you fail to understand that process, you fail to understand marketing and you fail to be in charge of your business.  And the result … your business WILL fail.

With the casestudy I provided you with above, it wasn’t just the absense of content and traffic that was the issue, this person seriously missed the mark on how to get traffic.

I had one person say to me once “my blog’s been up for months now and not one person has signed up to my newsletter.”  Well the answer to that one was easy, “you have five articles on your site which are at best mediocre.”

And, I’m sorry if I offend the freebie seekers now, but learning how to do things properly online does not begin and end with gleaning “tid bits” from this site or that blog - here and there.  At some point, you’re going to have to SPEND SOME MONEY!!!  Did I shout!

I believe I did, but people really have to hear this.  None of us learned to read and comprehend grammar by picking up books and scanning them or reading a page from this book and another page from another.  Getting the whole picture is what what helped with comprhension.

So, if you want to be in charge of your business, you have to be in charge of your marketing and to do that, you’re going to have to learn the process of marketing.  The best way to learn?  Follow a step-by-step program.  If you find a free one then great and I do highly recommend Ed Dale’s 30 Day Challenge for starters.

You’d also do well to hire a coach or mentor who has done what you would like to do so they can show you exactly what you should be doing and, what to avoid.  Ask yourself the question, “how do I learn best,” and then find something that matches your learning style and stick to it.

Even if you outsource elemements of your online business and even if from day one, you have no intention of doing it yourself, understanding the process is going to turn you into a an intelligent and savvy marketer who will know the right questions to ask from the right people.

Until next time,

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Build a Website The Easy Way

Don’t run away from building a website because whether you do it yourself, or have a designer do it for you, you need to build one!

It can be daunting to consider venturing into your own online business, having to think about your niche, the marketing of the site and then either do it yourself or hire someone to build a website, but before you start breaking out into a cold sweat, it really isn’t that difficult to build a website in the 21st century.

I admit I was adamant to learn how to build my own website from day 1, mainly because of the price designers were charging four years ago .  But I’ve used almost every software out there, including Dreamweaver, now owned by Adobe, Netobjects by Website Pros as well as various other online website builders before finally listening to my husband and buying, and sticking to Microsoft’s FrontPage 2003 .  I’ll explain why I think this is the best website editor in a moment.

But whatever way you look at it, if you want an oline business, you’re going to have to have a website and this applies even if all you’re doing is marketing other people’s products as an affiliate.

As my mentor, Alan Forrest Smith, would say…,

“don’t talk about building a website, talk about building a business.” 

Why?  Because this forces you to change your mindset about your website and rather than create an expensive online brochure, as I call them, you’ll create an automated business machine that once created and created well, will continue to keep working and making money for you with just some tweaking, maintainence and updating from you.

As I said before, I purchased my copy of Microsoft FrontPage after finally listening to my husband who kept telling me he used it at work and how easy it was.  So after getting frustrated with jumping from one website editor or online site builder to another, I purchased a copy and I’ve never looked back. 

Whilst a web designer will tell you Dreamweaver is the best, I can tell you that hands down, FrontPage is the easiest to use and has everything you need to build a website that not only looks good, but makes you money.  And this is coming from me, the techie. 

FrontPage is also the same software that most of the Internet Marketing guru’s use to make millions of dollars each year.  So unless you’re aleady familiar with Dreamweaver, I would save yourself the headache and use something that’s easy and gets the job done in less time.  Otherwise, you’ll get frustrated and frustrated people often give up!!

And, if you’re used to Microsoft Word, then you really are laughing because of the huge similarities in the interface.

To get the most out of creating a website and adding things like forms, linking my website to my merchant account and capturing email addresses, I invested in Jim Edwards Mini Site Creator home study course and if you want to have a ‘no stones unturned’ video course that takes you from complete newbie to pro in a few short days, then this is the program that will clear all of your headaches on building mini websites.

By mini websites, I’m talking about 1 to 10 page websites that focus on one product or one theme but there is absolutely no reason why this program can’t be used to create a 30 page niche content website.

Jim not only shows you “how” to build the sites, he highlights the various kinds of sites and will explain the mechanics behind why he does what he’s doing. 

He also demonstrates the building of a mini site using FREE software that comes with Mozilla FireFox.  Whilst not as sophisticated as FrontPage, it’s great for the beginner or if you can’t afford to purchase Microsoft FrontPage immediately.  The bonus is that Jim Edwards has created some updated videos where he shows you how to use FrontPage with the FrontPage expert himself, Paul Colligan.

Now, I’m going to be truthful with you… even after I spent a few days building my website, having put into place what I’d learnt from the Mini Site Creator, I hired a web designer to take what I’d done and add his artistic flair to it.  But hear me out before you call me an imposter!!

I had 101 things to do and I decided that now I knew how to do it, it meant that I was also able to project manage it!  So even though I gave it to a designer who did a sterling job, guess who was in charge of the project?  Yes me! 

I gave them permission to use a little flash but forbade them to go overboard because it’s annoying and doesn’t keep people on your page any longer, and I was also able to control the look and feel including the font and font size (not sure why some designers love to give you fonts that no one can read online - they’re small and grey) as well as the overall ease of the navigation.

If I didn’t know what I learnt from Mini Site Creator I may have just accepted anything, including all of the mistakes that newbies make with their websites (not time to go over these here, but I will in the next few days).

If you want to go and see that website, it’s at www.womenofinfluence.com.

Another interesting thing is that I used this same designer for a number of projects, including some of my clients projects, and mine were always hundreds of dollars cheaper because all they had to do was take the template site that I’d put together using the Mini-Site Creator course and add their designer flair to the graphics.  So even with hiring a designer, I have a huge advantage over those who have no idea of how to build a website.

Even if you’re not interested in purchasing the course just yet, or ever, go over to Jim’s website at  www.minisitecreator.com and listen to the interview with Dr Jeanette Cates.  Jim Edwards gives away so much quality information in this interview that it will enable you to put some of the strategies into place immediately.

Hope you feel a little less stressed and worried about either building a website or having it built for you, but whatever you do, don’t hesitate building one unless you have no idea of what you want to market online. 

To your online success,

“Your Niche Will Find YOU!”

This is what my coach used to say to me in the early days of building my coaching practice…

"Your niche will find you."

Well, it was to be almost two years before my niche found me, but in the meantime, I had to build my coaching practice on what I knew, which was personal development and leadership.

So what is my niche?  I help people get started on the Internet..  More specifically, I help women get started on the Internet.  And "Yes," that does mean it’s Internet Marketing and yes, you’ll hear some of the guru’s tell you that Internet Marketing isn’t a niche, but I disagree!  My aim isn’t to try and compete with them and tell you how to make millions of dollars in 24 hours, but I can tell you how to plan, launch and grow your business online.

Why am I telling you this and what’s it got to do with you?  I don’t believe in shying away from an oversaturated market.  If you’re being constantly called upon to help others in that particular area  (which is what happened to me), there is a market out there ready to be served… by you!

There may be better, richer, more respected players within your niche, but I believe we all have a purpose and if it’s your purpose to serve a paricular group of people, even the best out there won’t do it as well as you!

Live life on purpose TODAY!