What is social media?
It is truly something new, or it is a communication technology that is misunderstood and miss-applied because these new broadcasting and networking platforms have commoditized messaging by allowing the masses to have access to broadcast capacities and influence that were only available to a few years ago.
The answer is very basic. It starts with being meaningful and relevant to those that find you.
And where should they find you?
Everywhere that they are looking. Social media allows you to be everywhere, talking to everybody and listening to everything.
How do you sell social media?
That's a big question with which requires a big answer. However, it also requires some deeper questions and investigation.
Let’s begin by dissecting the question, as the knowing how to sell something assumes that you know what you are selling.
Not truly knowing what social media is, how it works (and doesn’t work) and the technology behind the whole machine is the precursor to missing the mark.
Understanding the whole picture means:
Image via Wikipedia
In business, we have what I refer to as “the three Ts†– tools, techniques and thinking. Let's define them for the purposes of this discussion.
- Tools – the devices that help us get things done.
- Techniques – how to use the tools that help us get things done.
- Thinking – how we process data so that it become usable information.
As I observe people looking to start a new business, too many times they shoot for the mass markets, commodity markets and no-margin markets.
They ignore the niche markets, low-volume, low-competition and high-margin markets.
Going back to my experience as a sales rep in the industrial equipment space… at any given time, I had only 10 to 15 customers with only three to five competitors. And in that seemingly small market, with seemingly no competition, over $100 million in sales was produced.
The basics do not change. In business, to be successful, you must execute on your ideas and bring them to life in the real world.
Thinking about getting something done is not the answer. I have been studying the theory and practices around execution. No high and mighty ideas. Just the basics.
What I discovered was something called the excuse list. That’s right - the excuse list. We are so concerned about positive thinking and looking at problems like they are “opportunities” that we forget that we are human and we have and make excuses all the time.
What is easy to do is also easy not to do. All the great ideas, goal setting and action plans in the world can not stand up to one good excuse.
So what I do while I am planning a project is write down what I now call the excuse list. This is everything that I can think of that will get in the way of completing the task at hand.
Here’s an example that led to an whole new business model for me.
Situation: Not doing any testing.
Excuses:
- I don’t have the time
- I don’t have the tools
- I don’t have the traffic
- I might run out of time
- I have other things to do
- Another project might come up
-
I don’t want to do the work
- I might mess up the pages
- The sales might go down
- I may not do the test correctly
These my friend are excuses.
Every last one of them can be solved and handled. But, you have to get them out of your head and on a piece of paper so that you can deal with them.
Introducing the excuse list. Just write out the things that you don’t want to do but should be doing and the reasons that you have for not getting it done.
Your excuses are your own. So take care of them.
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Your Excuses Are Your Own
Best Regards,
So, what is a Rainmaker?
The Rainmaker is the person in the organization that brings business in. He is money guy.
Without the Rainmaker, the business will die. For years, I was a professional Rainmaker.
The position requires that you understand and can be effective in the areas of:
- Sales
- Marketing
- Closing
- Promotion
- Offer Design
- Exposure Generation
This is the “front end” and the “front line” of a business. This is where good sales guys live. Although sales is a bad word. The fact is that there is more money made by salesmen than in any other profession.
Jerry West and I are doing a seminar in October 20–21 that will give you a step-by-step plan for your online business. Nothing will be left to chance.
We will look at your:
- Marketing
- Website
- Traffic Generation Structure
- Sales Funnel
- Conversion Process
So that you will have a complete 6–12 month plan for increasing and expanding your online business.
Check out the SEORainmaker seminar this could me the road map pushes your business to the next level.
If you are a rainmaker or need a rainmaker, this may be the program for you.
The 20 Master Plot and Marekting. How do they connect?
Many of you have heard me speak about the 20 master plots and how they can be used for marketing. Coming from a sales and engineering background. The plot is what holds the story together. It is the substructure of the whole deal. It tells me who I am in the story and who my customer is in the story. I like to learn the fundatmentals because the fundatmentals are everlasting.
So using plots to outline and create headlines and body copy, I find, make my copywriting easier.
To ask the questions:
- What story am I in?
- What story is my customer in?
- How can I make my story compelling?
Gets you to the fundamentals of copywriting. Copywriting is writing a compelling story that your reader wants to be in.
I found an interesting article about plots. It seems that I am not the only one who has seen this. The question is how to use this to increase your ability to communicate effectively with your customers, readers and visitors to your website.
Enjoy
Which came first the product or the market?
In my opinion, the market comes before the product. A product is not a product until someone buys it. Until someone buys it, it is only inventory. Or if you’re lucky a good idea waiting to happen.
Getting, Holding and Engaging the Attention of your visitors is most critical part of doing business on the web.
When I was working with Dr. Kowalick in the area of advertising optimization, a strange thing occurred. We took our focus away from the testing mechanics themselves. Meaning, we took our attention away from the tools, arrays and the math and simplified our scope of work toward the design of the experiments and design of the inputs.
Input Design Overview
The design of the inputs is the most important part of the entire experiment. This was the primary reason that some students get 5% increases and others get 200% increases.
It is not the headline itself. It is the design of the headline.
It is not the images themselves. It is the design of the images.
How to do test pricing?
This is one of the most common questions that I get.
How do you determine the best price for your product or service?
- Guessing is one way.
- Testing is another.
<Of course, I prefer testing.>
But if you ask a better question you will get a better answer.
So the question becomes “how do I determine the price points to test to get maximum profitability.”
