Category Archives: Internet marketing

After spending a few years loathing the way that Internet Marketers go about doing their business, I have learned so much about how to do it right and not follow the work of the guys that used to annoy me…

How to Get Rich Quick!

piggbank For years, Internet Marketing has been riddled with lame product after lame product, offering you a get rich quick system that will make you a millionaire overnight. Then the seminar market got flooded with all these meetings that you could pay to simply be pitched to for the day. And now webinars that are simply a 50 minute presentation with no helpful content for you and a pitch at the end, seem to be common place.

As an Internet Marketing mentor, one of the things that I help my clients with is the whole value proposition. Give away the best of your knowledge and material so that others can see you are truly an expert. That is what I try to do here on my blog, when I speak at an event and in a little more detail for my email subscribers (subscribe today if you are not on the list). If you ask a question on my Facebook page, you’ll get and answer not a sales pitch.

But this whole culture of get rick quick, doesn’t flow very well with this ‘giving’ of knowledge does it? If you are giving something away, how can you make any money from it? So how do you get rich quick?

3 Ways to Get Rich Quick

There are really only 3 ways that you can get rich quick – in the way that many hope for (the overnight success). You can get some inheritance, win the lottery or rob a bank. They all have their draw-backs… some more than others (and I am not advocating robbing a bank!).

For me there is really only one way to make Internet Marketing work for you and earn the money you want to. First though, believe that there is no get rich quick system out there:

If you are a business owner – learn to leverage the power of the Internet to drive more leads and sales into your offline business.
If you are an Internet marketer – start treating the work you do as a ‘proper’ business and forget building a list, build a client base.

In my 14+ years in the Internet Marketing world, I have yet to find the magic silver bullet to riches overnight. But if I’m honest with you, my route is not going to be a slow route to more success, I am building with momentum and the plans I have for the next 12-18 months will see my business double, if not treble in size.

build-a-business

As a mentor of the Business Wealth Club, I help business owners to see how they can improve all aspects of their business and marketing – but for the Internet marketers… there seems to be little to help. They should all focus on building a business rather than just having a hide-away hobby that they work on in their spare time.

Focussing on building a business, then developing a solid strategy for marketing, sales and scaling the business in the right way will be your best route to success and greater riches.

Do You Believe in Yourself Enough?

In todays celebrity culture, there are so many people to look-up-to – TV, advertising and the Internet make it so easy to follow the high’s and low’s of a celebrity lifestyle, that many people try to emulate. I want to be like them society is crying.

The heros of yesteryear have not disappeared completely, but there is less news about the person trying to develop a cure for cancer than there is about David Beckhams new tattoo or Caroline Flacks romance with Harry Styles. But are these the real role-models that we should be looking up to? Should society be trying to copy them or should we be valuing ourself enough to stand and be who we are supposed to be?

In the world of business, the millionaire Dragons, Sir Alan or the comb-over legend that is Mr Trump as well as many others are the people that are looked up to inbusiness. But where are the approachable business leaders of today that we can get alongside of and learn from real hands on, 1-to-1 mentoring and coaching?

I am talking about the need for real guys and girls that are really making it and are prepared to spend time with you, showing you how they really make their money. The people spending time helping many other toachievemore in life. These are the role-models we need today.

The biggest problem that stops many many owner managers, self employed individuals or the unemployed, to become role-models in society or business, is that of real low self worth or self belief. It hinders their ability to really make it and end up just trudging through life.

Valuing yourself, your knowledge, and your story will give you the get up and go to make things happen – and not just for you.

Sam Walton, the US entrepreneur that founded the Wal-Mart was once quoted as saying Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of those they interact with. If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish.I believe that everyone has the capacity to do this, including YOU.

StartBelievingIn Yourself – Quick Exercise

If you struggle with a sense of low self-esteem or believe that you have nothing to give or to be able to position yourself as a leader or role-model in any area of life, complete this simple exercise to help you develop a high level of self-belief.Get out a notepad or three sheets of paper and use each page for notes that you are going to make on these three areas:

1. Yourself - If you are in business today you are successful. You are working to make a living for yourself. You are master of your own destiny. Be proud of the fact that you took a decision to risk starting your own business and that you can say today Im still here. But business is just one area. What about the rest of your life where you have achieved things and overcome adversity?

Action: At the top of the first sheet of paper, write the words My Achievements – then make a list of everything in life that you have achieved. Swimming badges to PHDs, bringing up children and doing a first aid course. Think about everything and write it down.

2. Your Knowledge - You know stuff – things that many other people dont. Yet there are probably 100s if not 1,000s of people that want to know what you do. They want to learn how to fix problems they have in their lives. They want to learn how to satisfy desires or needs. And you can help.

Action: Make a list on the second sheet of paper, under the title of Things I Can Do, of all the things you know how to do. Things that you can apply knowledge to. I would be able to write things like, play the guitar, ride a bike, use Photoshop, speak in front of large groups of people, market a business properly. These should all be driven out of the knowledge you have in areas of your life. Things that you have learned to do, or find naturally able to do. It might be difficult at first, but try. Once the lists starts to shape it will just flow.

3. Your Story - This is the glue that hold it all together and the nectar that will attract people to you. Unless you have lived in a cupboard all your life, you will have experienced love and heartache, times of good health and poor health, gain and loss – and so much more. People are emotional beings, some more than others. It is the expression of emotion through story telling that will keep people engaged. Mix this into experiences of the lessons from learning all the things you wrote on the second sheet of paper and you have something that people will be able to identify with and want to know more about.

Action: Think about where you are now in life. What decisions did you make or what circumstances have led you to this place you find yourself in now? On the last page write at the top My Story and start making bullet point notes about milestones in your life that were your life-changing moments. Think about why you started your business in the first place. Think about why you do what you are doing now. Think about what you did in the past and why you did it, and why you dot do it now.

Once you have done this, read it all aloud to yourself. Speak it into yourself.Start with page three. Tell yourself your story. Move onto the next page and then speak aloud all the things that you are able to to and potentially be able to share your experiences of these things with others. Finally, read page one aloud. This person has achieved so much in life and this person that is able to share their story, knowledge and experiences in life with others to help them achieve much more for their lives.

The REAL Key To Successful Marketing – Understanding Your Target Audience

If I could help you understand one thing that would make your marketing really rocket, that would be to know EXACTLY who your target audience is and how to understand their demands and characteristics.

If you are running a business or thinking about setting one up, online as an Internet marketing business or offline as a traditional business, if you understand your audience and target market correctly, all your marketing efforts should go be laid to waste.

Your Target Market? – Isn’t this obvious?

Although that seems a pretty obvious thing to think about, I still see many businesses trying to market and push products to people that are just not interested or simple do not need your product or service. The flip side is that when you work in your own business and have products or services to sell, you can get into the trap of thinking that you have a very small target market so shouldn’t be doing much marketing or advertising.

Let me give you an example of something that I came across recently:

I was working with a website that sells hand crafted birthday cards. The owner of the website thought that only those people who have to wish someone a happy birthday will be the one’s buying her cards. Knowing that the search engines are her main route to her website’s publicity, we started digging for phrases and terms that people might be searching to find her site, and her competitors.

After taking the time to look at these she realised that there was a much bigger audience for her to tap into, and potentially diversify her offering of cards from not just Birthday’s, but to many other occasions and life events.

This then got her thinking more about her target audience and we worked through a number of different things to consider when looking at her marketing activity. We started to look not just at what she was doing in her marketing, but also who she was communicating to.

If you take a step back, look at your target audience that you want to be marketing to by asking yourself questions such as:

Who do you intend to target?
Why you do want to target them?
What makes you think that your targeted audience will listen to you?

With all those questions in mind, you need to then define your target audience in a little more detail. Think about their characteristics:

Demographical Characteristics:
Think about basic factors such as their age, gender, occupation, level of education, monthly income, relationship status, etc.
Geographical and Cultural Indicators:
Different people living in various regions of the world have numerous expectations which might largely differ from one individual to another. These expectations could be influenced by the types of cultures they are accustomed to and affect buying decisions.
Lifestyle trends:
Once you have some idea about your audience, start to think about what they are like, what choices they are expected to make and what their needs are. Are they sporty? Do they stay at home and play video games? Do they have regular jobs or do they work at home? Do they have children?
Needs, Wants and Desires of your Customers:
When people buy something, they generally have a need want or desire. How can your product or service help solve their need or satisfy that desire or want? Survey’s help to understand this more.

With all these characteristics in mind, form a generalised customer profile which will summerise all the factors that you outlined to define your target audience. It will help you connect well with your audience and also help with great customer service.

Work through this and see how well you understand your target market, review your marketing activity and stop using a blunderbuss approach to your marketing. Become a sniper, pick your targets, aim well, use less effort and win the bigger prize.

If I can help at all tweet me @anthodges or call the office for a chat – 08432 894 402 (local rate).

Pay on Results SEO – is this not working for free?

Many people ask me the question all the time “What is SEO?”

SEO stands for Search engine optimisation. It is work done to get a website or the pages of a website, to the top of the search results in the many search engines around the world.

With a huge proportion of the search engine market, many SEO companies tend to focus and measure results based on the local Google search (ie For sites in the United Kingdom, Google.co.uk. For USA sites it would be Google.com).

I run an SEO company in Swindon called HodgesNet. Our aim is to help the websites of our client’s to appear on page one of Google, and then help them to climb to the top of of page one for terms that their customers are searching for.

Today I am proud to announce our Pay on Results SEO service.

With the HodgesNet Pay on Results SEO service, we are saying that we believe in our work so much, we will do it on a results only basis. Essentially, we will work on your SEO for you and you will pay us only when we get results.

For more information on how this works and how we measure results, please jump over to our Pay on Results SEO page on the HodgesNet website.

http://www.hodgesnet.co.uk/pay-on-results-seo/

High Expectations Are The Key To Everything

I am not normally the one for quotes and tweeting them out constantly, but every now and again I get inspiration from a quick glance at a few quote sites.One really spoke to me this morning and has given me some real focus for me week ahead.

High expectations are the key to everything. ~ Sam Walton

For those that dont know who Sam Walton is, he is the founder of retail giants Wal-Mart and Sams Club.

In essence, I believe that you need to have goals in life to aspire to. The old South Pacific song says You’ve got to have a dream. If you don’t have a dream, how you going to have a dream come true? So aims, aspiration, ambition, dreams they are not wrong to have.

What spoke to me this morning about this quote from Sam was the fact that a dream may not be enough on its own. Out simply, a dream or aim for your business this year may be to get to the end of the year still solvent. Great. If that is what you aspire for your next 12 months in business.But what about aiming higher? Can you hit the 500,000 mark this year? The 1m, 2m or 20m mark?

Aiming high means you will be looking forward and up, not backwards and down.

Keeping your sights set on better things, rather than just make-do things.

My aims are set higher now for this year – are yours?

(Featured eagle image used under CClicensefrom Moosealope)