Marketing Education

May 31, 2009 | Leave a Comment

This article is not what you think.  You saw the headline and thought I would talk about how to do marketing for educational products.

Instead, let me use a moment of your time and ask you a question you may have never thought about before.

Can Marketing Change Education?

Marketing is all about making a human being take action and buy something because they believing in an outcome.

Marketing sells makeup that makes you believe you can be more beautiful.  Marketing sells cars that make you seem more successful. Marketing makes you believe you can lose weight.  And really, belief is a big part of the battle.  If you do not believe you can do something, you are not going to do it.  If you do believe it, and you keep at it long enough, your odds are significantly higher of succeeding.

So can marketing make kids believe they are all good at math?

Could marketing techniques be used to make a school of normal kids believe that they are in fact all gifted students?

What would happen if we marketed learning to students - not the purchase of learning, but the act of learning?

What if our most talented sales people became teachers and sold the kids on how brilliant each one is?

What if teachers became required to take sales training courses - how to sell concepts to adolescence?

Not only would students learn more, but they would have a different level of enthusiasm about the future and they would better be able to sell their ideas in the future.  Huge.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Blog 

How to Measure Inbound Marketing Results

May 28, 2009 | 2 Comments

Ultimately, there is more than one way to measure Inbound Marketing results.

Inbound marketing is the intentional creation of information/content to draw targeted people into your information portal.  It may be a blog or a website.

So measurement #1 is increased traffic.

But effective Inbound Marketing draws in targeted traffic, not just general traffic.  So how many people are taking advantage of your call to action?  If it is a low number, your Inbound Marketing may not be targeted very well or your call to action may not be attractive to the market.  One way to know this is by looking at the search engine keywords people are using to find your site.  If the keywords are good and seem to be the right target, then your call to action needs improved.  If you are not getting good keywords, your content is not targeted or optimized.

Measurement #2 is leads from that call to action.

Measurement #3 is actual sales.  This may take longer to track, but is your Inbound Marketing effort generating sales results?

Your Inbound Marketing strategy may have some other outcomes you want to target and measure as well, such as growing lists.

When I say grow a list, I mean a lot of things.  Email list, twitter followers, faceBook friends and RSS subscribers are all different kinds of lists that you can grow with Inbound Marketing.

If you assign a value to each of these things, you can then estimate the ROI on your Inbound Marketing - be sure to include the time you spend writing.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Blog, Internet Marketing 

Lead Generation with Blogs

May 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Can you generate leads for your business by blogging?

The short answer is yes.  The long answer is a bit more complex.

Blogs are a way to provide information to people.  How well your information does at generating leads has less to do with the medium (In this case blogs) and more to do in developing a lead generation strategy and crafting the blog and information you produce to get lead generation results.

If you want to primarily use a blog to generate leads and you are not worried about establishing yourself as an industry expert, then you need to craft a strategy that focuses on ranking well for important keywords and having a clear call to action that results in leads.  Something like downloading a free study or taking a free course.

The blogging mistake people make is that they use a blog the way they think it is supposed to be used.  There is not one way to use a blog.  A blog for lead generation is much different from a personal blog or a blog that is meant to establish you as an expert.  Your lead generation blog should have minimal distractions and focus on your primary call to action.  Period.  Less navigation, no blogroll and no adwords or advertisements.  (No, this blog is not for lead generation)

This works really well if you want lead generation with blogs - but you have to get the system and formula right and start out with the best blog strategy.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Blog 

Buzz Marketing Campaigns

May 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Over the last year, we have really taken our focus away from Buzz Marketing and turned it towards lead generation with content marketing.  Why?  Because it is very measurable.  It is a clear lead acquisition strategy that works and it has a great ROI.

But what if you want to do a Buzz Marketing Campaign?

There is absolutely nothing wrong with doing a buzz marketing campaign.  These types of marketing campaigns can be very effective.  The problem with trying to sell it is that people think that Buzz is the outcome.  Actually, just like content marketing, Buzz Marketing must be the way that you drive prospects into the top of your sales funnel.  And that means that before you launch a Buzz Marketing Campaign, make sure you have a great lead acquisition tool and proven sales process.

I know that buzz is way more sexy than talking about lead acquisition.

But proven results with great ROI are much better than lots of buzz and no money to show for it.

Honestly, I am just tired of all the different marketing terminology being created.  Inbound Marketing, Content Marketing, Buzz Marketing, Viral Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Attraction Marketing….

Don’t fall in love with the wrapper.  Build a sales funnel and find creative ways to help people find you and opt to become your lead because you are so nice and helpful.  The only thing hard about this is shutting out the noise and clutter and focusing on results.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Blog, Buzzoodle, Interesting Buzz 

Blog Writing Service

May 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Did you know that the Buzzoodle Inbound Marketing tool actually has three levels, and the upper two levels include a blog writing service?

While inbound marketing is probably the most effective and profitable marketing that I have ever seen, it is also one that does not always pay off - usually because the business thinks it can write articles regularly, but they fail to make it a priority and end up with little in the way of lead generation.

That is why we added the blog writing service to the program.  It does not mean that you will not want to do any of the writing yourself, but it means that if you get busy for a while, you can be sure that someone is writing on your business blog and getting you results, even if you are focusing on something else.

If you buy a content marketing/inbound marketing solution from anyone, remember that it is not the software or the website that gets results, it is the regular production of high quality content that your target market will find valuable.

A blog writing service is essential to make sure you have the consistency and focus to produce your blog articles that will generate leads for you.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Blog, Buzz with Blogs 

Take Off Your Business Meek

May 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment

I remember the first month I was in business - it was a long time ago.

When I first started, I had created a good brand name and an interesting product.  I had a great background, having worked as a professor and as a Benchmark Analyst for Ernst and Young.

Yet starting my own business was new, and I felt like something was missing.  I did not contact those first people with the confidence that is required.  I was naive and lacked confidence in what I’d created.

Again -  it was a long time ago.

Today I get emails from people - a gmail or yahoo account with no signature and no mention of their company.  They might be asking me a question or making a comment.  What comes through on the email is a lack on confidence because they are hiding who they are and what they are selling.

Take off your business meek today if this sounds like you.

I do not care if your product is not ready for prime time or you do not have anything to sell.  Find an affiliate product, set up a blog, do something to start generating some visibility and start building relationships.  It improves over time and it is never truly done.

I always launch the marketing for a product before I launch the product.  If you have an idea, set up something and start building interest in the idea.

I have several things early in development right now and I have already launched websites for them, for example.

Someone that is not confident would not even consider the marketing until they felt the product is perfect.  This is holding you back.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Blog 

Affiliate Software

May 25, 2009 | Leave a Comment

If there is one thing that I have struggled with over the years, it is finding the perfect and flexible and trusted affiliate software solution.

Currently I use 1ShoppingCart which is very good.

However, the monthly cost is a bit steep when you are just getting going.  Also, I have not figured out how to set up different affiliate programs for different audiences.  I think it is possible, but I have not found the way to let people into one program and not another.

So I go out and do a search on affiliate software and there are a lot out there and many are very reasonable.  However, I cannot get a clear read on which affiliate software performs the best at a reasonable price.

Do you have a favorite affiliate software solution?  If so, add it to the comments - I would like to get some feedback from everyone before I spend money on any of them.

I know that the other solution is to use Clickbank instead of my own affiliate software.  I am considering that as well.  I do like to build a good relationship with affiliates and I am not sure that is possible via clickbank.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Blog 

Basic Internet Marketing Tools

May 20, 2009 | 1 Comment

I am putting together a list of links of basic internet marketing tools for a presentation and I thought I would share them here.

Two Things You Must Have

Most things are free - these are not but they are necessary:

>>> BlueHost - Set up 50 blogs in a few clicks for less than $9 per month.

>>> aWeber - Every business needs to be building their list every day.  I wish I would have started a list sooner.

Blogging Solutions

Lead Generation Engine

Social Networks

Social Bookmarks

Reporting and Research

Publishing

I know there is a lot more that is not on this list, but I am trying to think of what somone new to Internet Marketing may need to promote their business.  Feel free to add your own additions in the comments.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Blog, Internet Marketing 

The New Celebrity Brand

May 20, 2009 | 1 Comment

Reading the interview of Queen Rania of Jordan at TechCrunch and could not help thinking about how this is the year that the celebrity brand is changing in a main steam way.  The celebrities that do not jump on the bandwagon and embrace social media really might end up forgotten.  Not overnight, nor all of them, but this really is a big deal.

It took me all of a few minutes to read that interview, scan the tweets she’d posted and feel like I know her and like her.  And think about this.  If she sent me an email every day about charitable work she is doing, or sent out a press release about it daily, she’d seem like a show off or it would just get old.  But twitter is the perfect medium to show your involvement with things without annoying people or getting boring.

It also shows the human side of everyone.  And all the media attention they are getting for using twitter is helping drive up the numbers really fast and helping more people connect to them in a big way.

Do you think a year from now the news media is going to cover a new celebrity that is Twittering?  Probably not unless it is a very slow day.  That means this is the year - all you famous people that read my blog had better get out there and start building your new celebrity brand before you are no longer a celebrity.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Blog, Branding 

SEO Expert

May 19, 2009 | Leave a Comment

About 9 months ago, a client of mine - who’d been a great client for a long time - decided it was time to try something new and they went with a big SEO firm.  Real SEO Experts!  About 5 times the cost that he was spending with me.

Today I had the chance to catch up, and it was a fun talk.  It turned out the stuff we set in motion for him right from the beginning did exactly what we said they would do - they got stronger over time and are now making him very nice money.

The SEO Expert Firm?  Fired - and he said it was a huge waste of money.

Don’t get me wrong, SEO is great and there are some wonderful companies out there.  But SEO is not about 5 pages of your site - it is about great site architecture and producing good content that auto-optimizes itself.  Buzzoodle now exclusively sets up sites to do just that - see seo for lead generation.

SEO is definitely not easy and not fast.  There are a lot of people that claim to be an SEO Expert.  What you may need is a great publishing solution, more so than an SEO expert because the expert will fix up some pages and (hopefully) produce some great inbound links, but that is not a replacement for publishing good content in an optimized system.  Look at all your options before making a decision.

Posted by Ron McDaniel | Filed Under Blog 

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