Archive | February, 2023

Don’t Be a Quitter – Be a Failure Instead

By Tony Eboha on February 16, 2023 in Blog

We’re taught from early on that success is everything. Win the game or ace the test and you get the grown-up’s approval. Then we get older and succeeding becomes even more important. You got into a hot shot college? Congrats! You won the contract? Great! You built a multi-million dollar business? Super!

But here’s what nobody tells you – before you can win you’ve almost always got to lose, and lose big, and lose often. You’ve heard the expression, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” right? Well, when you venture you don’t always gain. Many times you lose, and you lose big.

And when that happens, your confidence takes a nosedive. The next time out you hedge your bets, you pull your punches and you don’t try as hard. Why? Because that way if you fail again, you can tell yourself that you didn’t lose as big. It’s funny, but it’s also human nature.

People fail a time or two and then what do they do? Sadly, many quit. They just give up. Failure hurts too much. It’s humiliating and embarrassing and they’d rather play it “safe.” Which actually means they don’t want to play at all, they just want to sit in their cozy cotton lined box and never venture outside into the cruel world again.

Here’s what those people don’t know: The ONLY way to truly, absolutely, permanently fail is to quit. Everything else is simply a step on the way to success.

Did you know…

– The average millionaire goes bankrupt 3.5 times.

– There is a new millionaire created every 58 hours.

– The average millionaire doesn’t realize their dream until age 45 and becomes a millionaire at 54.

– The average millionaire dabbles in 17 different businesses, concepts, schemes and enterprises but doesn’t hit it big until the 18th try.

Entrepreneurship is the quickest way to become a millionaire. 74% of all millionaires in America became millionaires through entrepreneurship.

The average millionaire goes bankrupt and what does s/he do? Dusts themselves off and tries again. And again. And again. Failure is a temporary detour, not a roadblock. I absolutely promise you, if you’re still breathing then you can still succeed and succeed BIG, regardless of how many times you’ve failed in the past.

Remember those Chicken Soup for the Soul guys, Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen? Their manuscript got rejected 140 times by 140 different publishers. Most people would have quit after the 10th or 20th rejection, but they just kept sending out that manuscript until the 141st publisher took a chance. Result? Both of them are millionaires many times over.

Winston Churchill failed the sixth grade and he was defeated in every public office role he ran for. Then he became the British Prime Minister at the age of 62 and led his country to victory in WWII.

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. – Winston Churchill

R. H. Macy had a long and undistinguished history of failing businesses, including the first Macy’s in NYC. No one would have bet on him, but he went on to create the biggest department store in the world.

Marilyn Monroe’s first contract with Columbia Pictures expired because they decided she wasn’t pretty or talented enough to be an actress. But Monroe kept plugging away, and even today’s audiences know and love her decades after her untimely death.

Toyota passed over Soichiro Honda for an engineering job. He could have quit on his dreams. Instead, he went on to make motorcycles and cars and became a billionaire in the process.

Thomas Edison’s teachers told him he was “too stupid to learn anything.” Imagine how that could impact a child, hearing from the ‘experts’ that you’re too stupid to learn. Most kids would stop trying. Not Edison.

Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time. – Thomas Edison

Vera Wang failed to make the U.S. Olympic figure-skating team. Then she got passed over for the editor-in-chief position at Vogue. Time to realize she was a failure, right? Wrong. At age 40 she began designing wedding gowns and today she’s one of the hottest designers in the business and a self-made billionaire.

You’ve probably heard that Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor because he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas.” But did you know that he had several failed businesses before the premiere of Snow White?

The difference in winning and losing is most often…not quitting. – Walt Disney

Albert Einstein’s teachers labeled him “slow” and “mentally handicapped.” What if Einstein had actually believed the people who made these proclamations? For one thing he never would have won the Nobel prize in physics.

Henry Ford’s first auto company went out of business. He abandoned a second because of a fight and lost a third to declining sales. Yet he went on to become one of the greatest American entrepreneurs ever.

If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right. – Henry Ford

J. K. Rowling was unemployed and living on social security while writing her first Harry Potter novel. It was rejected by 12 different publishers and finally picked up with a paltry advance of just 1,500 pounds, but now she became the first person to become a billionaire through writing.

For every failure to success example I’ve given here, there are literally hundreds of thousands of others out there. And the only thing stopping you from becoming the next failure to success story is you. So what are you waiting for?

Hurry up and get your failures out of the way so you can go on to create big success for yourself too. And maybe someday your story will be featured right along with Einstein’s, Ford’s, Disney’s and all the other great people who refused to let a little thing like failure get in their way.

The Absolute KEY to Making Money Online? No, It’s Not Traffic…

By Tony Eboha on February 16, 2023 in Blog

You can have all the traffic in the world, but if it’s not converting, then you’re not making money. That’s why the crucial key to making money online is conversions.

How compelling is your presentation? How many prospects out of 100 actually BUY your product, both today and during your follow up sequence? Conversions are where you make your real money, both today and in the future. Affiliates won’t promote you if your offer isn’t converting. But if you have a high converting offer, affiliates will send you as much traffic as you can handle and sometimes more.

So how compelling is your sales letter? How branded are you? People buy from those they perceive have the answers. People buy from those they admire and from those they trust have the solutions to their desires.

There are many conversion techniques, but the big 3 to focus your efforts on are:

– Social proof factors like testimonials
– Claims backed by proof
– Scarcity

In fact if you were to focus all of your efforts on the first two – proof – then your offer would convert. Add in scarcity and you can’t miss.

I’m going to say something here that will seem almost sacrilegious to many marketers: Forget traffic. Traffic is simply a byproduct of conversions. If your offer is converting, you’ll have affiliates wanting to promote it. Just get 3 affiliates, and those affiliates will tell their affiliate friends how great your product is converting and so forth.

But if you can’t convert then you can’t get affiliates. And if your offer isn’t converting you’re also not going to spend time or money on traffic because it will be a waste. Think about this: When you convert and convert well, you can BUY all the traffic you want. You don’t even need affiliates. If you can spend $100 to make $110 then you’re in business. Increase your conversions and make $150 or $200 or more for every $100 you spend, and lounging on that beach can finally become a reality.

But you probably won’t want to get lazy on a beach because when you can convert, this business becomes addictive. You suddenly find you can make a LOT of money and you want to see that money continue to pour in.

Traffic is not money – CONVERSIONS are money. Yet I see marketers totally focused on getting traffic. They think if they can just get MORE traffic, they’ll make money. But if the traffic they’re already getting isn’t converting, how will more traffic help?

Sadly the vast, vast majority of people in this market don’t know a thing about conversions. They’re newbies and they ignore the one thing that is the most critical, most crucial, the paramount thing to make money in this business. It’s the one place you find the money – conversions.

Yet everyone stays away from studying and learning conversions. If they would just focus on how to get their offers to convert, they’d have tremendous results, more than they could even anticipate.

When you start focusing on conversions, the money will come.

So what should you study to convert better? What should you test? I’ve covered many conversion techniques in the past, but here’s a short list to get you started.

Study copywriting. I don’t know why, but copywriting tends to be something most marketers just gloss over, as though it’s the least important element. It’s not. If you have a great offer but do a lousy job of selling that offer to the prospect, you won’t convert. It’s that simple. Changes in your sales letter, or even entirely new sales letters or videos, can make all the difference. You’ve simply got to study what works and practice, practice, practice.

Social proof is huge. The prospect wants to know for a FACT that your product will do what you say it will do. They want to know that others have tried it and gotten the results you promise. They even want to know that your product is selling and selling well. Don’t just dump a few testimonials at the end of your sales presentation – weave them throughout. Make them the foundation upon which you build your sales letters and videos. And make them real, from real people who had real doubts until they actually experienced your product.

Another conversion element online marketers tend to ignore is branding – especially branding yourself. Make a name for yourself in your industry or niche. Become the go-to expert, the answer guy or gal people turn to for solutions. When you’ve built yourself a name, your name alone will make sales from your most loyal fans. They really will see you’ve got a new product, scroll down and hit the buy button. But it takes time and effort to build your brand and your reputation, and most marketers aren’t willing to do what it takes.

Decide what you and your brand stand for. You can’t be all things to all people, so choose who you want to be and then become that person, that expert. Build relationships with people in your niche, especially with potential JV partners who will mail your offers for you. Put a great deal of thought into how you present your products, what you put into your email sequences, what your graphics look like and so forth. This is a BUSINESS, not a magic button.

Branding and being a celebrity is actually the highest form of conversions because you build a reputation of knowing your niche. You’re talked about and people know you only put out real value and they buy based upon your name alone. You’re an expert, an authority figure. When Stephen King puts out a new book, do you think he needs to ‘sell’ it to his readers? No. They just buy it because HE wrote it, and they know they’re going to like it.

Give yourself a title. Who said, “I’m the greatest.”? Mohammed Ali, and everyone else took up the cry. Who said, “I’m the hardest working man in show business.”? James Brown, and that became his title.

Gary Halbert said, “I am the world’s greatest copywriter, and if you don’t believe me, you can go to my website. It says it there.” And the branding caught on and people called him the world’s greatest copywriter.

So don’t wait for someone else to give yourself a title, give it to yourself. Repeat it often enough and it will in fact stick, and after a while few people will even know or remember that it was you who gave yourself the title.

Bottom Line: When you focus on something (like conversions) the answers just start to appear. When you study emails and sales letters, ask yourself what the technique is, what the person is doing that makes it successful. Read between the lines. Make ‘conversions’ your mantra and you cannot go wrong in this business.

10.5 Ways to Make Your Blogging EASIER

By Tony Eboha on February 16, 2023 in Blog

One of the toughest things about blogging is the self-imposed pressure to always have a terrific, earth-shattering, life changing blog post that makes people catch fire reading it.

You know what I mean. You’ve got that little voice whispering in your ear that if your posts don’t measure up to some impossibly high standard you’ve set, then all is lost and the world will know that you’re a fraud.

The good news is, it simply isn’t true. You don’t need every post to be a 2,000 word masterpiece or the final definitive word on your topic. Instead, all you need is content that gives your readers what they want. That’s it. Your readers want to know the latest news or the best methods? Then that’s what you give them. Forget trying to be a great writer and instead focus on being your readers’ ‘friend in the business’ and you’ll be an AMAZING blogger.

Here are 10.5 more tips to take some of the blogging pressure off of you and put the fun back into blogging:

Make yourself a posting schedule and then stick to it as regularly as you brush your teeth. Surprisingly, having a blogging schedule actually makes it easier for you to blog. It provides soft deadlines that keep you motivated to sit down and write. You won’t be able to put off your blogging if your readers expect a new post every Tuesday and Friday, and you know it.

Keep a running list of blogging ideas. Use a program like Evernote to keep track of your ideas and the resources you can draw from when writing your posts.

Forget being totally original. Seriously. Every idea is built upon or inspired by someone else’s idea. So give credit where credit is due, provide your own unique twist or take on the subject and relax – no one expects you to reinvent anything.

Re-purpose your content and other people’s content, too. Curate, list, pull bits and pieces from here and there – it’s all good. Just give credit to everyone you sourced from. And go back to your own content and see if you can’t update it, re-purpose it, mix it up or whatever. Odds are if you’ve been blogging for more than a year then you’ve got a small goldmine of content you can mine to create new content.

Be more of a reporter and less of an expert. Being the go-to expert in your niche is difficult, especially when you’re new to blogging. The pressure can become so unbearable that you cease to write, afraid you’ll pen something that will make you look foolish in your readers’ eyes.

But if you place your focus on reporting instead of being the absolute authority, magic will happen. You’ll feel freer to express your own opinions, you’ll find it’s far easier to write posts, and because you are referencing other authorities and experts in your niche, you become your own authority to your readers.

Mix up your content. Are you only writing blog posts? Then add videos. Are you only podcasting? Then write blog posts. If you limit yourself to one media, you’re also limiting the number of people who will engage in and benefit from your content.

Short is great. So is long. There was a time when it was suggested (actually, I saw this again quite recently) that no post should be under 2,000 words, and all posts should take days to write and be the absolute authority on whatever you’re writing about.

Hogwash. I briefly mentioned this in the beginning – write as much as you need to. If you can cover your topic in 200 words, DO IT. If it takes 2,000 words, then just make sure you’re holding your readers’ attention for the ENTIRE 2,000.

This reminds me of the “short sales letter vs long sales letter” debate. It’s a stupid, ridiculous debate, and here’s why: A blog post or a sales letter should be exactly as long as it needs to be and no longer. Period.

Stop leaving terrific blog comments on other people’s blogs. Seriously. You just read a post on a high traffic blog and you’ve got your own opinion or insight you want to share that you’re sure will help that blog’s readers.

Don’t do it. Instead, create your own post on your own blog and link back to the original blog. Then let the original blog know that you mentioned and linked to them in your post. This way your blog has more great content and who knows? You might get a backlink from the blog you referenced.

Use images. Every. Time. Maybe more than once, too. It’s irrefutable that images work at grabbing attention, so make sure that every post you make has at least one image. And be sure to place a caption under the image, because people are far more likely to read the image caption than anything else on the page (other than the headline, of course.)

Publish your articles on other sites. Sites like LinkedIn, The Huffington Post and many, many others allow content to be republished on their sites as long as it fits their guidelines. This is a terrific way to pick up new subscribers by posting a link back to your own profile or blog.

And what about Google’s duplicate content penalty? The duplicate content penalty doesn’t apply to syndication or curation. If it did, you’d never see a major news site appear in the top of the search results because they all subscribe to services that helps them get duplicate content, such as the Associated Press. And bloggers who frequently syndicate their content to other quality sites report that they receive no penalties what-so-ever.

10.5. Ask for the subscribe. Ask. And ask. But don’t be obnoxious. You wrote a post on getting traffic, and you’ve got a free report on even more ways to get traffic? Ask them to subscribe right there at the end of your post. “To get 27 more ways to get targeted, free traffic with the push of a button, simply tell me where to send the report and it’s yours.”

If you’ve been having trouble blogging on a regular basis, hopefully reading this has made you realize that blogging doesn’t need to be stressful. The rules are not as rigid and some would have you believe, and the most important thing of all is to simply give your readers what they want and lots of it, in whatever form it might take.

5 Ways to Become the Expert OVERNIGHT

By Tony Eboha on February 16, 2023 in Blog

Wouldn’t it be terrific if you could go from being Mr./Ms. Marketing Nobody to immediate “guru” status overnight? You’d enjoy instant authority in your niche and a high level of credibility with your potential customers as well as your potential JV partners. People would trust your opinion. You’d be quoted in blog posts and asked to do guest posts…

You could get interviewed. You could join lucrative joint ventures and mastermind groups. Your social media accounts would become magnets to followers and fans. Customers’ sales resistance would go down and your sales would go up, and so forth.

Becoming an ‘overnight’ authority in your niche shaves a few years off of your online marketing career path. You’re taking a quantum leap from being an unknown to being – well, KNOWN in your niche. And you receive all the benefits a known expert in your field gets, only without the years of work.

Sounds pretty good, don’t you think? Yeah, it’s cheating, but it’s not. Who ever said you have to take years and years to accomplish what can be done in a few days or weeks?

Here are 5 ways to do it:

1. Interview others. Oprah wasn’t an expert, she interviewed experts. And by doing so, she became associated with every expert she interviewed. In your case, you’ll want to go much more narrow and deep than Oprah, choosing your targeted niche carefully and then interviewing anyone and everyone in that single niche.

2. Buy named rights products and sell them. These are products sold by big name marketers that allow you to keep their name on the product when you sell it. You’re basically co-featuring with an established expert. At the bottom of the salesletter you can write something like, “From the desk of ‘your name’ and ‘guru’s name.’ Buyers will assume you have partnered with the guru in putting this product out. These types of resale rights generally aren’t cheap, but that plays in your favor as well, since it greatly limits any competition.

3. Create a product yourself, then let a big name marketer be the co-author and co-owner. This heightens your profile and generally brings in a lot of sales from that marketer’s list, as well as from affiliates who promote for that marketer.

4. Write/edit a book full of other people’s articles. Choose a topic and then find articles written by the experts on this topic. Ask their permission to place their articles in your book, giving them full credit and links back to their website. You do the editing, write the introduction, and also add notes at the beginning and end of each article if you choose. But the experts are still doing all the heavy lifting, while you get to associate your name with theirs. In fact, it looks like a collaboration between you and all these big names, with YOUR name on the front cover.

5. Do all 4, along with guest blogging and being active in social media. All of a sudden people will say that they see and hear you everywhere.

Some people take a lifetime to go from the mail room to the boardroom of a company. But this is your business, and YOU make the rules. Don’t wait years to become an expert in your niche – decide to become one today.

Relax, It’s Not About You (It’s About Them)

By Tony Eboha on February 16, 2023 in Blog

I see new marketers all the time freeze up with fear. They’ll have a great idea for their business and start to act on it, all excited. Then something happens, something that plants the seed of doubt, and suddenly they’re asking, “Who am I to be doing this?”

Maybe they have something great to teach that would help others, or they have a different way of doing things that would solve people’s problems. Whatever their idea or their business, that seed of doubt takes root. They get scared. They become self-conscious. And they doubt themselves and their abilities.

This is when I tell them, “It’s not about you, it’s about your customers. It’s about the people you’re going to help.”

Imagine you’re about to go on stage to present information that will change the lives of your audience. But you’re nervous. You think you’re not a good presenter. You’re focused on how you’ll look and how you’ll sound and what the audience will think about you.

This is the wrong focus.

If you focus instead on helping those people, if you focus on THEM and not YOU, then you will find it easy to give your message.

I’ll give you an example: Just as you’re going on stage to make your presentation, someone whispers in your ear, “The building is on fire, we’ve got to evacuate these people NOW!”

Do you hesitate? Do you wonder what you’ll say at the microphone? Do you worry about how you’ll look and sound? NO! You rush onto the stage and immediately start directing people to find the nearest exit and go to it now. You tell them to stay calm, to move swiftly, to leave no one behind. If you see smoke coming from the back, you direct people to the front. You say and do whatever it takes to get those people out of there.

And lo and behold, not ONCE during that process did you think about YOURSELF.

Magic indeed.

If you have doubt – If you’re worried – If you’re scared – Then you’re thinking about yourself and you’re NOT thinking about your customer.

Remember, it’s not about you – it’s about them.

There is a Power and Magic in Beginning

By Tony Eboha on February 16, 2023 in Blog

Whatever it is that you want to do – just begin. Don’t think about doing the whole thing, because you don’t have to do the whole thing… You only need to take the first step.

Most people don’t start because they’re thinking about the whole thing. It’s too big. There’s too many obstacles. They don’t know how they’ll do it all.

The thought of the whole project is overwhelming and paralyzing. It’s easier to put it off…

“I’ll start it later when I have time. When I finish this and that. When the kids are gone. When I’m retired. When life isn’t so hectic.”

Life is always hectic. It’s busy. It’s a whirlwind. But we decide what we do with each moment. So just start. Just begin.

You want to exercise but you don’t have time? Just do 10 minutes a day, everyday. Just start. Don’t worry about running marathons, just do 10 minutes today. Then tomorrow, do 10 minutes more.

You want to write a book? No one can write an entire book. But anyone can start. Just write for 10 minutes, that’s all. Easy, right? Look at the clock. An hour has passed and you’re still writing.

Challenge is good. Little challenges. Lots of them. Just begin. Don’t climb Everest, climb the jungle gym. You can do that. Tomorrow climb the hill behind your house. Lots of little challenges add up.

Do you want to learn to play the piano? Just begin. Imagine if you had started when you were a kid and played 10 minutes everyday. By now you would impress almost anyone. Now imagine you start today – in 5 years, who knows? You might be entertaining your family and friends during the holidays, but not if you don’t begin.

You want to start a business. Ooooh, scary. So many things you’ll have to learn. Better to wait, right? No. Just begin. Just start.

Everything conspires to keep you from beginning. But there is power and magic in taking that first step, because it’s the first step that leads to the second, and the second to the third.

If you never begin, you will have only regret. By starting, you can create your own future.

All you need to do is begin.

Quit Your Job and Go Full-Time Online

By Tony Eboha on February 16, 2023 in Blog

What a great daydream this is: You make a ton of money online and then go tell your boss to ‘have a nice day.’ This is the scenario you see in sales letters all the time. “Buy this product, put it to work and next week you can kiss your job goodbye, forever.”

Real life doesn’t always work like a sales letter. In fact, life continually gets in the way. You make some extra money but then it dries up. Or you have an emergency and the extra money bails you out of that crisis but you’re no further ahead.

Or – and this is the most common of all – you have the best of intentions but you never quite get around to making that fortune online. And so you are still at your job. Even though a year ago/two years ago/five years ago/ you swore you would be retired by now.

Whoops.

How do you eat an apple? Unless you’re a horse, you eat it one bite at a time. In my early years I found that building your online income and telling your boss to shove it works the same way – you go through the process of replacing your income one step at a time.

It’s a funny thing: You can make $5,000 a month online fairly easily, but only when you KNOW you can do it. Until you KNOW it, it seems just out of reach. And as long as the goal seems out of reach, your subconscious will sabotage you every step of the way to see to it that it never happens. If you can’t conceive it, there is no way you’re going to achieve it, no matter how hard you try.

It’s like getting a job. You can’t get the job without experience, but you can’t get experience without a job. Same way with making money online.

But right now, this instant, I’ll bet you know that you can make enough to cover just one of your bills, right?

So pick a monthly bill of yours, any bill. Now get enough income coming in each month to completely cover that bill. Maybe it’s your $100 water bill. Great. All you need to make is a consistent $100 a month, and it’s taken care of.

Don’t spend this new income on anything but paying that bill. Any money you make above what it takes to pay the bill is either reinvested into your business, or…

… you pick another bill and start covering that each month, too. And you just keep adding another bill and another bill into the mix until they are ALL covered, including your mortgage or rent, including your food, including everything.

But notice how you did it – not all at once, but simply one bill at a time. Your mind can wrap itself around this concept of taking it one step at a time. Your subconscious will stop fighting you and you’ll be surprised how easy the process becomes. It’s all about small steps that prove you can do it, that prove you can move on to the next level, and the next.

Once you’ve got all of your bills covered and then some, you can quit your day job with confidence, because now you KNOW you can make money online. There is no question. You’ve already proven you’ve got the confidence and the skills.

The magic is this: Instead of sitting down at your computer and thinking, “Okay, I’ve got to make enough money to cover all my expenses this month,” you simply tell yourself you’re going to make enough to cover one little bill.

You’re no longer trying to create an entire business, you’re simply taking the first steps. You’re enjoying numerous successes along the way that fuel you to keep going.

Get that first bill paid and you’ll be on your way to achieving total financial freedom, one step at a time.

How to Increase Your Blog Writing Speed

By Tony Eboha on February 15, 2023 in Blog

Blogging is a proven way to stay in contact with customers, get new buyers, get traffic and backlinks and especially boost your own credibility rating. But all of that blogging takes time. Here are 7 tips to make your content creation, and blogging go a lot faster.

1. Keep a list of your brilliant ideas. Okay, so they won’t all be brilliant but some will be. And if you don’t write them down you’ll lose them. Each time you get a new idea for a blog post, write it down. This simple act frees your mind to give you even more ideas and to improve the ideas you’ve already had.

2. When you’ve got a good idea, start making a list of what you’d like to add to it. For example, your idea might be “10 Ways to Inject $10,000 into Your Business.” As you think of each method, write it down.

3. Do your research. While you might know some of the points you want to make, you can deepen and enrich your post by also gathering information from outside sources.

4. Eliminate the least. In our example of “10 Ways to Inject $10,000,” you might actually come up with 15 ideas or more. Discard the less appealing points so you can focus on only the strongest ones. At this time you might also find that your post will be better served by focusing on just 7 methods rather than 10. This is editing before you write and can save you a tremendous amount of time. Imagine if you wrote your post with your initial 15 ideas and later decided to use just 7 – you would have written twice as much as needed.

5. Create an outline. This step alone can cut your writing time in half.

6. Prepare your work area. Before you begin writing, eliminate all distractions. Close email and social networks and turn off your phone. Set a timer and try to beat it. And then write. Don’t edit. Don’t worry about spelling, grammar, etc. Just write.

7. Edit tomorrow. As good as your editing today might be, tomorrow it will be even better as you read your post with fresh eyes.

In addition to saving time, you’ll also notice that the faster you write blog posts, the less you mind writing them. Pretty soon your post-a-week schedule might even turn into 3 or 4 new posts each week. And the more you blog, the more attention you can command!

12 Ways to Make Social Media Pay Off

By Tony Eboha on February 14, 2023 in Blog

By now you know that social media is great for building your lists and promoting your products. A recent study discovered that sales people who use social media for their jobs outperform their non-social media peers by 73%. But have you thought of using social media for these purposes?

Fundraising. Let’s say you’re using Kickstarter to raise funds for your new project. Problem is, no one knows you, no one trusts you, and no one is telling anyone else about you.

Solution? Get busy on social media prior to your launch. Establish a strong social presence and build your credibility. Once you’ve got a strong following who believe in what you’re doing, that’s the time to start your fundraising campaign.

Referrals. Sure, you’re already hoping your content gets shared on social media, but that’s not enough.

Be sure to always give great value and service to ensure your customers have plenty of positive things to say about you. Then run contests, offer prizes and discounts to encourage your customers to share their positive experiences with their networks.

Status. You can look like a big dog and boost your own credibility by sharing content from the big names in your industry. It doesn’t even matter if these influencers are aware of you – simply by associating your name with their name by quoting them will make you look like an influencer yourself and boost your own credibility.

Ice-breaking. Let’s say you want to make contact with an industry leader. Problem is, so do thousands of others. What can you do? Try following this leader on social media and look for points of common interest.

Maybe she has a dog – what kind is it? Is she passionate about that breed? If so, that’s something you might put in the subject line: “Phyllis, did you see a Yorkie won best of show at Westminster?” This is a much better icebreaker than, “Hey, I’m just one more guy who wants to JV with you.”

Kevin Bacon. It’s said that you can link any Hollywood actor to Kevin Bacon within 6 degrees. So what about the guy you’re trying to get a meeting with? If you can use social media to find common connections and get an introduction from someone he trusts, you’ll have one foot in the door.

Super Hero. You see a tweet from someone complaining about your competitor’s service. Or someone else is talking about a problem your business can solve. Why not don the cape and jump in to save their day? If you do it in the spirit of helping rather than selling, you’ll almost certainly gain a new customer.

Storytelling. Telling your brand’s story is a great way to captivate potential customers. But knowing how to tell the story can be challenging. So why not practice on social media? Give out pieces of the story, or many small stories, to build your brand image. Monitor the likes and shares to see which stories win the most social love, and work these into your marketing.

Help. Do you have a pressing problem? Reach out and ask your social network for help. One couple lost their wedding venue and $7,000 deposit six weeks before their wedding. Thanks to reaching out for help on social media, they received everything from jewelry to a wedding cake to a new event planner.

Anticipation. Build anticipation for your next content – whether it’s a blog post or a book – by posting about your progress in play-by-play fashion. This keeps you in touch with your community, gives insight into your work and provides an eager audience when your content is finished.

Accountability. If you have trouble completing your to-do list, consider posting what you’re going to accomplish in the morning, and then reporting back in the evening whether you accomplished it and how it all turned out. There’s nothing like knowing your entire social network is paying attention to whether or not you do what you say you will do to keep you on track.

Currency. Marc Jacobs opened a pop-up store for the New York fashion week where the only currency that could be used were posts to Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. That’s right – they didn’t accept money, only social media posts, using the hashtag #MJDaisyChain. This is a great way to gather some social media momentum, new clients and terrific testimonials.

Pay it Forward. Find something nice to say about someone on social media every day, or offer to help someone, or maybe even send out a call to help anyone who asks. Not only will you build positive brownie karma points – you’ll also attract attention from potential customers and best of all, you’ll feel great about yourself and your business.

These are just 12 examples of thinking beyond the social media box. If you keep an eye out for how others are using social media, you’re bound to find even more business-building ideas.

Become an Internet Marketing Detective

By Tony Eboha on February 13, 2023 in Blog

At the risk of stating the ridiculously obvious, Internet Marketing is changing. Just because you’re making money today won’t guarantee you’ll still be making money tomorrow. There are the obvious examples: Possum, Penguin, Fred and what not. But then there’s new regulations, new technologies, changing interests and priorities of consumers, more competition (sometimes bad, sometimes good) and so forth.

Without a doubt, the money is still there to be made – but you might have to get creative and expand your horizons to find it. And when you do find it, don’t rest on our laurels. Don’t think you can set a funnel up and just ignore it and it will continue to deliver forever. You might wake up in a month or two and be shocked to find your account balance hovering near zero if you do.

That’s why you’ve got to always be on the lookout for great ideas, and even mediocre ideas that are profitable. Make it a daily practice to write down at least 3 or 4 new ideas for making money and growing your business.

What happens if you don’t walk for a week? Your legs atrophy. And your brain works the same way. Either work your brain relentlessly and it will get stronger, or don’t use it and it’ll harden into something useless.

The economy has been having it’s own set of challenges for years and while it’s better now for many people, there are still millions of people who are out of work or not making the money they used to make. So what are they doing? Many are turning to Internet Marketing. You might think this is bad because of increased competition, and it can be. But if you make a list of ideas on how you can capitalize on this, what will you discover?

First, these people will need training on how to do online marketing. That covers an entire realm of possibilities, including step-by-step courses and coaching.

Next, these folks will need help. They’re not going to be experts at everything from building websites to creating products to getting backlinks to designing product covers. So if you’re willing to perform services, there’s money to be made.

Remember the TV detective Columbo? He would be asking the suspect questions, always very polite, very nice, acting like he needed help in figuring out what happened. Only he was smart – he was playing the suspect right until the end. My favorite part is when he would be leaving the room, and the suspect would be breathing a sigh of relief. ‘Whew! Dodged that bullet’ the suspect is thinking. But then Columbo pauses at the door, or even walks out the door and then comes back in, and he puts his hand to his head like he just remembered something, and he says, “Oh, you know, I almost forgot, one more thing…” And then he’d nail the suspect with the real question, the one the suspect just didn’t have a good answer for.

This should be you. You’re a detective, always on the lookout for that “one more thing” that will make your campaign more profitable, that will increase your subscriber rate, that will double your conversions and so forth. Always be searching for the questions your prospects ask that lead to a breakthrough product. Always be asking, asking, asking “What do people want? What problem is keeping them up at night? What would they pay to fix, improve or eliminate?”

Get in the mindset of a detective and you’ll view the world differently. You’ll see things you missed a hundred times before. People will start to think you’re psychic or something. You’re not. You’re just asking questions and paying very close attention to the answers. And you’re using your brain – something a lot of people are too lazy to do.

Bottom line: Things are changing and they’re going to change a whole lot more. Fall asleep at the wheel and your business will crash. Rely on what worked before and you will go broke. Continue to provide the same old products and the same old solutions and you’ll find yourself standing still in the middle of a very fast race.

Be a detective like Columbo and you’ll always get your paydays.

← Previous 1 2 3 4 5 Next →