That’s what my friend Croix (pronounced kroy) has now after finishing his cross-country run. I saw the pictures, and it was kinda gross.
Oh, and by “cross-country” I mean LITERALLY across the country. He ran from San Diego to New York City in 100 days. http://www.dreambigactbig.com
He blogged all about it every day of his trek, so I got to see and hear all about it. At one point he was smack-dab in the middle of Alabama when they had all those tornadoes go through.
Truly amazing and inspiring stuff.
When I think of the scale of what he accomplished, while it was phenomenal, it really came down to three simple things:
- knowing where he was starting from
- knowing where he wanted to end up
- putting one foot in front of the other
I firmly believe that most people don’t get the things they want in life or business because one of those things is missing.
Take online marketing for example. Most businesses don’t put much strategic thought into what they’re doing – whether it’s putting up a website, shooting videos, or Twitbook-ing.
Don’t get me wrong. Action is great. It’s the thing that makes entrepreneurs successful.
Just make sure step back and notice whether you’re making forward progress in the most efficient way possible.
If you need some advanced help with that, call my office at 909-297-1662 and ask for my Strategic Online Audit which includes an analysis of how you stack up against your competitors, conversion review, fast start action steps, and a 60-minute consultation call with yours truly.
Cheers!
Philipp
P.S. If you schedule yours by June 30th you’ll get 20% off as part of my “Get Me A Horsey” promotion to get riding lessons for my daughter. Hoodathunk they’d be so pricey!
You remember the line from the movie, don’t you?
“Wax on, wax off!”
It’s easily in my Top 10 of favorite movies, right between The Godfather and Pumping Iron (go figure).
When most people think of karate, they immediately picture sweeping punches and spinning back kicks in the air.
But according to Mr. Miyagi, that was only a small part if the picture.
If you recall, Mr. Miyagi didn’t get into punches and kicks until MUCH later in the training. All that painting, waxing, and sanding was teaching Daniel-san the most important concept of all – how to DEFEND himself.
It’s much the same way with online marketing.
So many just plain do it wrong and use a one-dimensional offensive approach – the main tactic being, “rank my website #1 on Google.”
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you shouldn’t do that. What I am saying is that once you get to that coveted position, then what? There are still 9 other spots (in the organic search results) that can throw punches and kicks your way.
So what should you do? You follow Mr. Miyagi’s instruction and defend yourself against them by – and here’s the key – taking away their opportunity to attack you.
The MORE spots on Google’s first page you can claim for yourself means FEWER spots available to your competition.
And in order to do that, you need to leverage more online real estate than a lone website.
Multiple niche sites, mini-sites, photos, blogs, video, social media, and articles strategically targeting the right keywords are essential tools in an effective defense.
If you need some help creating and implementing a solid internet marketing plan just call us at 909-297-1662 and request our Strategic Online Audit.
Cheers!
Philipp
While I’m not as good as my sister who frequently finds brand-name sweaters or jeans for under $8, I’m down for a good bargain when I can get it.
My typical “Honey! You won’t believe the deal I got!” scenario involves one of the following:
- Buy 2, get 1 free (Calvin Klein undershirts)
- Get an additional “$3 gazillion” of value if you act now (seminars always get me with this tactic)
- 30% more almond M&Ms in the bag (these are like crack to me)
I mean, who doesn’t jump at these kinds of offers where you can get MORE of what you want?
They work because they appeal to that innate motivation we all have to move TOWARDS those things that give us pleasure.
But, as the saying goes, “there’s more than one way to beat an egg.” (What, you’ve never heard that before?)
The other side of the coin is our drive to move AWAY from those things that give us pain.
So how do you tap into that? Simple…
Figure out what your customers want LESS of and charge a premium for it.
Here are some examples of the “pay for less” approach in action:
- less waiting (Amazon Prime membership sends everything with 2-day shipping)
- fewer security screenings/gropings (the private jet charter industry boomed after 9/11)
- no more getting lost (many high-end automobile brands come standard with navigation system and emergency roadside assistance)
While some methods require an increased investment in operations or service, you can start right now by uncovering the things you’re ALREADY doing that take away your customers’ pain.
Increased revenue or retention could just be a matter of showcasing what’s already “not there”.
Cheers to your success!
Philipp
P.S. I’ve just re-opened the doors to my “done for you” video marketing service that takes away the headaches of figuring it all out and doing it yourself.
My team handles all the production, editing, distribution, and promotion so you can take full advantage of the power of DIRECT RESPONSE video to both increase your “know, like, and trust” factor and elevate yourself to “expert status”.
You can see how it can work for you at http://www.nohasslevideos.com
When I was a kid, I wake up at 5:30am every Saturday morning, well before everyone else. I’d make myself some hot chocolate, wrap my blanket around me, plop down on the couch, remote control in hand, and wait in gleeful anticipation for my cartoon marathon to begin.
Unfortunately, my oldest daughter hasn’t established her own, solitary early morning ritual as of yet. At 2 years old she still prefers everyone else to accompany her in her exploits.
This past Saturday I wake up to a faint knock at our bedroom door.
“Daddy…”
I manage to pry my left eye open wide enough to see the clock. 7:14 am.
I hear the door creak open and little feet pattering closer towards me.
“Wake up, Dada, it’s morning time.”
She had just started saying that a few days earlier. It seemed so cute the first time, when I was awake. Not so much this morning. I keep my eyes shut, hoping she’ll give up.
“Let’s go downstairs, Dad. It’s morning time!” Louder this time, patting me above the covers. Nothing.
“Come one! Wake up!” Shouting and pulling the blankets off of my body. I’m definitely awake now, but still pretend to sleep, trying hard to keep from smiling.
“Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!” She’s shaking a toy tambourine in my face (where the heck did she get that?) like she’s performing with the Partridge Family. That one works.
“Okay, okay!” I say, laughing as I pry the noisemaker from her tiny hands.
It turned out to be a great morning. I cooked a killer breakfast (probably my best batch of home fries EVER). And we went for a nice walk around the neighborhood.
When it comes to your business, sales, marketing, do you act like a 2-year-old?
- Do you have a clear result in mind?
- Do you put yourself out there to move towards your goal?
- Do you notice whether your actions are working?
- Do you try something else when they aren’t working?
- Are you so committed to achieving your goal that you’ll try anything, even if it’s “shaking a tambourine”?
The road to entrepreneurial success isn’t always a nice and neat straight path. In fact, most of the time it’s the exact opposite.
No matter what they (the gurus, the PhDs, the talking heads) are touting, there is no ONE way that will work EVERY time.
Not many people will openly teach you that.
Thank goodness for 2-year-olds.
Cheers to your success!
Philipp
Back in 9th grade Literature class I remember having to read some atrociously boring stuff. I mean books that caused a “snoozefest” of epic proportions! (Yes, I’m talking about YOU, “The Scarlet Letter”!)
But there were some subjects that were completely fascinating to me. Greek Mythology was one of my favorites, probably because they appealed to my bias towards action-adventure.
You probably remember one of my favorite stories about the Trojan War in which the Greeks gave the Trojans a gift of a large wooden horse that caused the destruction of Troy, ending the war. This is where they get the saying “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.”
Well, when it comes to your business website, there are definitely a lot of “Greeks” out there that you need to beware of.
If you’ve done any research in the last couple of years to revamp your website, you’ve probably heard of the WordPress system. It’s what I recommend to everyone that asks and what I use for my clients and my own projects.
I’ll save my WordPress evangelist speech for another time, but one of its key benefits is the ability to apply pre-designed “themes” to change the look and feel of your website with a click of a button.
Many beautiful and cool themes can be downloaded at no charge from thousands of places online, typically found by Googling “free wordpress theme” or some variation of that.
The challenge is that many of these themes are being offered by internet “Greeks”.
While you may get the perfect design for your website, blog, or online store on the surface, they’ll include additional programming code that’s working away right under your very nose.
Now some of this hidden code can create conspicuous and harmless results, like adding backlinks to their website or product sales pages. But others aren’t as nice, hiding more malicious, encrypted code that creates spam links or worse.
I learned about this the hard way. That’s why I stay clear of WordPress themes “from Greece” and only buy them from reputable vendors that offer refunds, support, and accountability.
Here are my favorite resources. I’m not sure where they’re from but I’m pretty sure it’s not Greece…
Prices for themes average between $30-$100 and are WELL WORTH the investment.
FOR THE RECORD, I mean no offense towards Greece or the Greek people. My family and I love their rich culture and attend multiple local Greek festivals every year. In fact, we just had gyros for dinner last night. Food that tasty can only come from good peeps.
Opa!
Philipp
P.S. If you still want to join me tomorrow (Thursday) night in Pasadena to see famed marketer Bill Glazer’s presentation on Outrageous Marketing, you can get still pre-register to get in at no charge at http://eveningwithbillglazer.com. Otherwise it’s only $20 at the door, which is still an INSANE bargain.
All right, apparently I’ve been hiding under a rock for the past few months because I just found out that the last day to submit taxes WASN’T April 15th this year. We actually had until April 18th.
Why?
Well, there’s a little known holiday called Emancipation Day that’s observed in Washington on April 16th. Since this year it fell on Saturday, the IRS decided to take Friday the 15th off.
Luckily I got my taxes taken care of weeks ago. But for many small businesses out there, the were “emancipated”, albeit temporarily, from their tax filing.
You know what else most businesses could use to be “emancipated” from on a permanent basis? Boring, templated, same-as-everyone-else advertising.
Every time I flip through the newspaper, browse through websites, and do research in the Yellow Pages I find that most businesses start blending together and NOTHING stands out. They’re all saying the same thing and doing it in the same way!
That ain’t a good place to be, especially today when prospects and customers are more careful than ever about where they spend their dollars.
Make sure you don’t fall into that “just-like-the-others” category by using advertising that jumps out and grabs your audience by the collar.
And one of the best resources available out there that shows you exactly HOW to do that is a book by Bill Glazer called “Outrageous Advertising That’s Outrageously Successful”. It’s a measly 14 bucks on Amazon.com and worth HUNDREDS of times your small investment IF you actually use what he shares.
I’m actually going to see Bill speak here in my backyard next month and learn directly from the man himself.
An Evening with Bill Glazer
Thursday, May 12th, 6:30pm
Pasadena, CA
Seriously, if you’re anywhere within 4 hours of Los Angeles you absolutely WANT to attend!
FULL DISCLOSURE: I’m not getting a single penny for this endorsement. I just feel THAT strongly about what he teaches.
If you want to join me just click on the following link:
http://eveningwithbillglazer.com
Cheers and hope to see you there!
Philipp
P.S. Typically you can only see Bill at paid events where he’s compensated to speak and the tickets to those events are upwards of $2000 or more. But if you just pre-register after clicking the link below you can actually get your seat in the audience for FREE. Otherwise you’ll have to pay $20 at the door. Either way, it’s a no-brainer for me…
http://eveningwithbillglazer.com
This may sound a little crazy to you – okay, probably A LOT crazy – but when I go to the beach, before I jump into the crashing waves, I’ll sometimes ask myself, “Did you cut yourself shaving this morning?”
(Now normally that’s not a problem because I don’t shave often at all. Not because I’m lazy, but because it takes my face about 3 days to grow a 5 o’clock shadow.)
Here’s the one-word answer as to why I ask myself that question…
SHARKS
I know. Crazy.
But did you know that sharks have such a highly developed olfactory system that they can can smell a single drop of blood from up to a mile away?
Don’t ask me HOW they can do that. All I know is that freaks me out.
Now whether you feel the same about sharks and beaches, there is at least one other creature on the planet that has the same keen sense of smell and SHOULD freak you out…
YOUR PROSPECTS
Back when I was in corporate sales where you were expected to bring in a minimum amount of orders every month, there was a term we used to describe some of the “newbies” that were desperate to meet their number in the last few days.
We said that those guys had “quota breath”.
You couldn’t see or smell it, but it was there. There was something about them that screamed, “I really need this sale and I’ll do or say anything to get it.”
To your prospects that have KEENLY developed a nose for it, just the tiniest amounts will set alarm bells off in their heads that typically lead to the loss of a sale, or worse, signing a bad deal.
One HUGE tipoff of quota breath is giving a discount for no reason at all.
When that happens, a “vacuum” is created that needs to be filled. So in lieu of a reason from you, the prospect will fill it in with their own. Either “the product isn’t as good as he says” or “he needs the sale so I can probably squeeze out a bigger discount”.
Neither of those end up any good for you.
So it’s probably a good idea for you to give your sales and marketing promotions a little Listerine treatment and make sure you’re giving reasons for what you’re doing.
Cheers to your success!
Philipp
P.S. My Marketing Mashup Monthly “snail mail” Newsletter is going out next week with a surprise “April Showers” lesson that ONLY subscribers will get. If you want to be sure I send you your free copy, click on the following link and let me know where to send it: http://www.maramimarketing.com/mmmsignup
I don’t know about you, but I absolutely LOVE the Discovery Channel.
I mean, if they used those shows to teach science and history back when I was in school rather than just textbooks, I would have passed all of my subjects with flying colors.
I dunno, maybe it’s because I’m so visual, but just SEEING the way things work with multiple camera angles, 3D diagrams, and slow motion really helps things make “complex” things so much easier to understand for me.
That makes it more interesting and fun so that I really retain it.
For example, there was one show that I watched about plastic explosives that showed a really fascinating demonstration.
Most people hear the term “C-4″ automatically think of those big-budget, big-kaboom Michael Bay flicks. Typically the bad guys rig a building to blow up using big, bare bricks of the stuff with a pencil-shaped “detonator”.
Well, as much as I’m a sucker for those movies and gladly pay the $30 for a ticket and large popcorn, the Discovery Channel dudes showed how Hollywood completely gets that part wrong.
Here’s what they did…
They took a massive 4×4 foot steel plate 1 inch thick and laid it across two sawhorses. Then they took a lump of plastic explosive about the size of a golfball and placed it right on top of the steel plate, attached a timer to it, and set it off.
The result? Barely a scratch on the steel. The C-4 made a nice, fancy, explosion, but all the energy dissipated into the air.
Next, the Discovery dudes showed how it REALLY works.
They started with a thick steel cylinder the shape of a small drinking glass called a CASING, and lined the inside with the same amount of C-4. They then placed what looked like an miniature ice cream cone made of thin copper, called a “SHAPED CHARGE LINER”, pointy side first into the steel casing. Finally, they secured the casing to the steel plate and detonated it.
The result this time? The shaped charge tore a gaping hole through the steel plate the size of a baseball!
What caused such a huge difference in results?
FOCUS
Do you want to take MASSIVE action in your business? Absolutely!
But do you only want to make a big, showy fireball that barely makes a dent in your market? Probably not.
Instead, concentrate all your efforts and energy into a strategic and focused direction so that you can make productive impact and create the results you REALLY want.
Cheers to your success!
Philipp
P.S. My book is finally done! Woo hoo! It’s at the publisher’s now and will be widely available for sale on April 27th. I’m pretty excited about my new “baby” so you’ll have to forgive me for the next few weeks as I shout about it from the mountaintops and hand out cigars. I wasn’t sure if it was a boy or a girl, so I decorated with yellow and green 
Check it out here: http://twitpic.com/4ez373
I just got back from a road trip with my family to San Francisco.
After the 7 hour drive home, the stiffness in my lower back and numbness in my butt reminded me of my own little adventure almost 13 years ago when I drove solo from upstate New York to Los Angeles.
Back then I didn’t have a fancy GPS system, much less a road atlas. In fact, one of my best friends’ parents gave me their cell phone for the trip “just in case.” Laughably oversized, bulky, and heavy by today’s standards, that Motorola’s importance paled in comparison to my AAA Triptik.
If you aren’t familiar with it, the Auto Club’s Triptik was a miniature, spiral bound notebook made to order that outlined the route to your destination.
Each page covered about 50-100 miles and even included road construction information. So as you drove past each area on a page, you’d just have to flip over to the next page and continue following the roads marked with orange highlighter.
It was so simple and straightfoward to use that at the times my iPhone gets all out of whack, I find myself longing for my trusty Triptik.
As you now consider your promotions and marketing materials you’ll want to take a page out of the AAA playbook and ask yourself, “Does it work as well and as easily as a Triptik?”
- Do they clearly identify the path to the destination? i.e., buying from you
- Do they point out possible roadblocks (i.e., objections) and how to overcome them?
- Have I made them readily available to my customers and prospects?
Whether high-tech or low-tech, you can’t assume that prospects and customers will be able to find their way to your cash register. Give them the tools and instructions to help them get to that destination over and over again.
Cheers to your success!
Philipp
P.S. If you happen to be in the Los Angeles area next Tuesday evening I’ll be doing a presentation on “Local Search Engine Strategies”. If you’d like to attend, simply go to the following link to register http://www.maramimarketing.com/go/gkic-invite
You ever had this happen to you?
One of my good friends just moved out here from the East coast. Not knowing too many other people here, my wife and I invite him to eat out with us quite a bit.
Aside from the joys of his company, it’s also a good perk for us since he’s one of the few friends we know that’s as gastronomically open-minded as we are (I won’t get into details, but if you’ve seen that Food Network show Bizarre Foods, you get the picture).
Over the weekend we took him to one of our favorite holes-in-the-wall and halfway through the meal I see this HUGE piece of leafy green stuck in his teeth.
Now I don’t say anything at first because I figured he’d notice it soon enough, or that it would just dislodge on its own.
Well, after a few more bites and a gulp of Diet Coke, neither of those things happened, which was baffling to me because it was such a huge piece of vegetation.
Maybe he was just caught up in the good grub we ordered, or he just didn’t feel it because of his recent dental work, I have no idea.
In any case I finally tell him, “Dude, you’ve got some produce stuck in your grill*.”
“Really? Where?”
After a few rounds of “It’s right there, no the other side, the other other side, to the left” he finally hits paydirt and takes care of business.
I’m sure you’ve had to bail some of your own friends and family out of those situations before. And no doubt there were times where YOU were the one with lettuce stuck in your teeth and a caring friend had to break the news to you.
In fact, you could probably make a could make a list of your “go to” buddies that you would trust to immediately save you from those kinds of embarrassing situations: mustard on your face, your fly undone, boogie hanging from your nose, “kick me” sign on your back…
My question to you is, do you have those “go to” people for your business? A person or group of people that you can trust to tell you about things you really need to be aware of and correct?
We all have our blind spots in everything we do, from our personal hygiene to the way we operate our business.
Make sure you have some eyes on the outside that can help out and play “spotter” for you.
Cheers to your success!
Philipp
P.S. I’ve decided to add a Q&A section to my “snail mail” Marketing Mashup Monthly Newsletter. If you’ve got a burning question you’d like to get my 2-cents on, just shoot them over to answers [at] maramimarketing [dot] com. If your question is interesting enough and something that will benefit other subscribers, you just may see it featured in an upcoming issue.
* http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=grill
