Your Spectacular 2010 in 7 Steps
Marlon's Marketing Minute
The First 2010 Edition
January 2, 2010
7:22 p.m. CST
Hi,
Marlon here.
Out with the old, in with the new.
In today's article, I share 7 stets to a spectacular 2010 with
personal examples from my own business.
I hope the personal examples mean something to you. I know I
prefer reading someone's personal experience as opposed to how
to steps alone.
I want you to know I personally write my ezine articles and don't
outsource them. They're not all brilliant. A few are. But for
better or worse, the represent my best thinking at the time.
For the price of admission, that's a pretty good deal.
I wrote today's article as though it were a checklist for myself
for the New Year. Be sure to read the part about running your
domains through mxtoolbox.com
When I ran my blog URL through there, I found out one RBL has it
on the “bad” list. This is very important to know so you don't
use the domain in emails and can troubleshoot what went wrong.
Happy 2010,
Marlon Sanders
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Marlon's Marketing Minute
Electronic Newsletter
http://www.promotemarlon.com
Vol. 5, #1, January 2, 2010
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This issue contains:
A. Announcements from Marlon (Important)
B. Main Article: 7 Steps To a Spectacular 2010
Brought to you by: Marlon Sanders, Publisher
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A. Announcements from Marlon
1. Do NOT email us for customer support
Do NOT email us for customer support. We are anxious to
serve you at: http://www.getyoursupport.com
We have LIVE CHAT to serve you better. Most people in this
business skimp on this. I don't. Tim is an award winning
customer service person.
2. ATEAM 2010 is coming
Totally awesome things are ahead for Ateam in January.
Keep your eyes peeled. Also, I'm really behind on posting
the last few webinars. But we're completing revamping the
private site. That is why. You'll love what you see in
Ateam 2010.
3. Push Button Letters 10 minute consultations
Some of you purchased Push Button Letters a few weeks ago with a
10 minute consultation. Go to getyoursupport.com and tell Tim you
want to schedule it.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
C. 7 Steps to a Spectacular 2010 — My Own Personal
Checklist You Can Steal
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Ready or not, 2010 is here.
I want to lay out a checklist you can take to make
2010 a great one.
1. Focus 80% of your time, energy and efforts on
getting new customers.
The hardest thing you have to do in business is to
get a new customer. This should be the focus of
your mental energy and time.
Without a non-stop supply of new customers, you'll
not have the year you want.
In my business, I'm renewing my commitment to my
affiliates. And also trying a few new methods.
Focus on getting new customers. Then focus on it some
more. Now go get some more. Keep 'em pouring into your
funnel.
2. As a corollary to that, make sure you have
all your ducks in a row in whatever method you
use to bring in new customers.
If you rely on an affiliate program as I do,
make sure your entire systems hums like an
engine.
— Double check your affiliate tracking.
Turn your cookies off on your web browser (usually
in the privacy settings). Click on an affiliate
link and you should see a message pop up asking if
you want to allow the cookie.
There should be a way to view it. Inside, you should
see an affiliate id. That is how you know the cookies
work.
In my system, we can also place fake test orders to
verify the tracking works.
— Make sure your affiliates go into your
autoresponder and confirm. If you don't have your
affiliates in an autoresponder, find a way to
get them in one.
— Make sure you have your commissions set up
properly.
— Make sure you communicate weekly with resellers.
(This is one I dropped the ball on in 2009 and
we're fixing in 2010. So if you're one of my
affiliates, you can expect more consistent and
frequent communications.)
— Make sure that the return email address you
use passes all tests. Go to mxtoolbox.com and
run your domain through their tools to check
for problems.
— Develop frequent new promotions for resellers.
The minimum standard here is monthly.
This means new products or promotional tools
for your affiliates to use.
— Perform a monthly test to make sure your
tracking works as it should.
If you have some other way you bring in new
customers, then create your own checklist for it
to make sure you have it running on all cylinders.
If you don't have a way you're bringing in new
customers, then pick ONE and do it. Get it going.
Realize that usually any method takes tweaking.
For example, when my friend Joel Peterson runs pay-
per-click ads, he often starts at a high cost-per-click
and slowly lowers the price until he's paying 1/4
of what he started with.
My friend Kirt Christensen does the same thing.
The point is, don't expect it go great guns right
out of the gate. Keep tweaking it and making little
changes until you hit on the right formula.
I interviewed Sean Mize for the new product about
traffic I'm working on. Sean is the king of
article writing.
Every month he has outsourcers write hundreds of
articles for him. He kept mucking around with
that method until he turned it into a well-oiled
machine.
Sometimes you have to do things a bit differently.
One of my friends is crushing it with his affiliate
program. But he came up with a unique offer for
a few super affiliates that no one else is making
them. You may need to add your own twist to what
you're doing to get the results you want.
3. Sort your results from 2009 from top to bottom,
cut out the losing products or activities and plan
to expand the ones at the top.
If you have multiple products you promote (whether
your own or as an affiliate), create a ranking of
products in order of sales.
This gives you a good idea of what to focus on more
in 2010.
If you don't have sales, rank the activities you
DID do in order of effectivness. It's important
to know what things were a good expenditure of
your time and what weren't.
You accomplish more by doing less by tracking what
works and what doesn't. Then cut out the things
that work less well and do more of the few that
work better.
4. Double check your email capture process
Pretend you're a customer. Subscribe to your email
list. Walk through the process.
Does it distract from your sales process? If it does,
try something different.
I've always used “fly in” ads for email capture.
But right now, I'm testing out an “inline” email
form that goes right in the sales letter and is less
of an interruption to the sales process.
On one of my sites, I found that after you joined
the email list and clicked the submit button, you
had to click the back button then X out the pop
in order to read the sales letter.
You had to REALLY want our product just to wade
through the obstacles to reading the letter.
That's why we're trying out the “inline” email
capture to see how that works.
Your emails and autoresponder broadcasts are your main
tool for promoting your back end products. If you don't
know that terminology, just keep reading my ezine and I'll
get you up to speed on all the lingo.
5. Plan-Do-Check-Act
If I could only give you ONE tip for 2010, it'd be
plan, do, check, act.
— Come up with a target condition
This is a result you want to achieve.
— Create a simple plan to get CLOSER to your target condition.
You do NOT try to do it all at once. Find something you can
do you're pretty sure will get you CLOSER. Now do that.
If it works, find the next thing and do it.
If you have Ockham's Razor, the principle applies.
The simplest solution is usually the best.
What's the LEAST you could to have a decent chance
of meeting your target condition?
— Do your plan.
— Check to see if you got closer to your target
condition or if you moved away from it.
This is one place a CHECKLIST comes in real handy.
Actually, if you aren't using checklists in every area
of your business, now is the time to start.
— Act or adjust your plan based on that feedback.
I believe it's absolutely essential to track
your main numbers monthly like sales, leads, and
affiliate sign ups and sales.
It's very easy to implement ideas then forget
to check to see if they made things better or
worse! Not every idea works.
Inch-by-inch anything is a cinch. So just keep taking baby
steps towards your target condition and you WILL get their
by the end of 2010.
6. Zig When They Zag
It's easy to get caught up in what everyone else is doing.
For example, everyone I know is focusing all their
time and attention into building a continuity program.
I've revamped Ateam for 2010 but I don't plan to
make it the main focus of everything I do as some
are doing.
Why?
Because of the law of supply and demand. When
everyone does it, the supply goes up and the demand
goes down.
To get caught up in that vicious cycle doesn't add up to me.
NLP teaches a thing called “pattern interrupts.”
You do what others aren't.
The single most effective way to break through
the noise is with pattern interrupts.
If you saw our S. Mouse emails, you probably
experienced that first hand.
I'm also re-launching our Pizza Cast to affiliates:
http://www.promodashboard.com/pizzacast
It's definitely not the same old thing you see from marketers.
I've practically built my career on pattern interrupts.
Do you remember my “Jumbo The Elephant” promotions for
Push Button Letters?
If not, maybe I should revive those too.
I think there's a time to learn from other marketers and
do what they do. And there's also a time to innovate
and zig when they zag.
To me, that time is when everyone jumps on the bandwagon.
By then, it's too late.
7. Avoid getting so caught up in the details of running
the business and learning new things that you neglect
to focus 80% of your time and attention on getting new
customers.
Here's the truth:
Getting new customers isn't easy. It's the hard work
of business. The “fun” and easy part is making sales to
your existing customers.
So it's EASY to get caught up in doing that.
But typically promotions for new customers never work as
good as you want them to. I mean, by all means, if you
stumble across something that brings in new customers
like crazy, push on the gas pedal and don't let up!
But short of that, it takes effort to bring in new customers.
So it's easy to neglect it.
However, the engine of your business is new customers.
This is something you can't let slide by the wayside.
———————————————————–
Marlon Sanders
The King of Step-By-Step Internet Marketing
Marlon is the author of “The Amazing Formula That
Sells Products Like Crazy”
Check out all my products here:
http://www.marlonsanders.com
(SIGN UP AS A RESELLER, put YOUR reseller URL and ID where
the above link is, post this on your web site and make some
dough for spreading a killer guide everyone will want to read.)
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REPRINT RIGHTS: You have permission to use the above
article without omission and including the resource box.
You have the right to insert your reseller URL for any
products I mention
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Product's For Your Reference
============================
Tinu now sells the Evergreen Traffic System and supports it:
http://trafficreality.com/evergreen
I should list my other products here but I'm getting this out
way late since it's the holidays. So just go to
marlonsanders.com if you're hunting for something.
Finally, I read all the posts on my blog about Promo Dashboard
before Christmas. I'm working on a report that will address a lot
of the issues you have brought up.
Be watching for it.