Marlon Sanders has released the latest issue of ‘Marketing Minute’. The featured article is titled “Here’s How To Make Internet Marketing Work For You!”. [Article]


Marlon Sanders’ latest article:

Here’s How To Make Internet Marketing Work For You!

Hello,

Let’s cut through the bull, the smoke, the mirrors and talk about ALL you really gotta do to make it in this business.

There are SO many programs, systems, approaches and so much pitching, posturing, promising and claiming, people lose sight of the simplicity this business.

Folks, you GET people on your LIST and you SELL them! That’s it. Stop over-complicating.

How do you GET people on your list? You give ’em something free they just gotta have. How do you sell ’em? Guess what? You send SALES pitches via email that go to audio, video and
so forth.

This is a SALES game. We SELL people for a living. It’s NOT complicated in that sense, although execution can be a challenge.

Forget all the complicated nonsense you’ve heard. You GET people on a LIST and you sell ’em.

You don’t need 1,000 Power Points to know how to do that.

You don’t need 10 or 20 staff and buildings and offices!

You need an autoresponder, and something FREE and a way to ADVERTISE it. Come on. It ain’t rocket science. Get’em on the list, find out what they WANT. SELL!

Sorry that isn’t sexy or “sophisticated.” Now, later, if you’re like me and don’t wanna work much, yeah, you can hire a customer service person and a webmaster.

For 7 or 8 years I used Lisa in Canada. You can do that too after you have the money. The ONLY reason I have an office now is I have aspirations of growing a bit bigger.

There are people who have a hidden agenda to take what is at heart VERY SIMPLE and make it endlessly complex so you’ll buy program after program after program.

Which is fine IF you’re at the level you need those things. I contend you FIRST need to learn a few simple things about how to GET people ON your list then SELL ’em.

And you do NOT need a team of 20 outsourcers to do that for crying out loud. Seriously, you don’t.

You know the Power Point slides showing you the 1,000 things you gotta do in this business?

That’s bull. I’m sorry. It’s TRUE at a certain level if you WANT to grow big and have 10 or 20 or more employees. And yes, systems are good, even for small businesses.

With all due respect to my peers, you don’t need to do all that stuff. You just flat out don’t.

You need to do a FEW of ’em. Not 1,000. You advertise or promote something free. You have people sign up for your list on your autoresponder.

You write emails and send.

You have conversion audio, video, blogs, etc. Yeah, if I can convince you that 1,000 things are necessary and you need endless people and systems to DO those 1,000 things, I can SELL you a LOT of products, seminars, coaching, systems.

There is NOTHING wrong with coaching programs and seminars. I think they’re GREAT. I should do ’em but don’t. However, for you to feel confused and overwhelmed and think you
can’t do this business without ’em?

Come on! Get real. Those things are great IF you have the time and money.

But I know people who do $100,000 a month and have ONE employee.

I have another friend who does $100,000 a month and has I think 1 full time and 2 part time.

You need someone doing customer service. You maybe need a part time webmaster and later a full-time one. If you want to grow bigger, you can later have a product creator or an affiliate manager.

But at FIRST, you got few sales. You don’t NEED the service person until you’re rocking and rolling. The webmaster?

You do stuff yourself. Please. Or, in a pinch, you outsource to one of the inexpensive and talented graphic designers.

I’ve had people tell me they’ve been in 2 or 3 coaching programs or bought $40,000 of products and they’re so confused.

OK. Let’s clear up that right now. This is going to sound a little “preachy” or hard core. I’m the original Marketing Evangelist, so what I can I say?

Step one: Get people on your list Step two: Send emails

Step three: SELL

Which part of that equation is confusing? See what I’m saying? THAT’s what you do. THAT’s ALL you do. Everything else is fluff.

Well, how do I get people on my list? Try advertising and offering something HIGHLY attractive for NADA. Try that.

Where do I advertise?

Where the people hang out! Blogs, forums, web sites. Seriously, where ELSE would you advertise? On ships? On the sky? See, this is basic logic.

What kind of ads do I run?

Ummm, ads that offer something FREE, maybe?

Banners or text? Both if they work.

What about affiliates? Yeah, they’re good too.

What do I sell?

Uhhh, products people wanna buy. Either yours or other people’s. You got two choices — create your own or sell others.

Since back when I was marketing on AOL and Compuserve offering my little FREEBIES through classified ads. The GAME was the same! People were doing TELESEMINARS back then! And even doing them on autopilot.

Yes, it’s true.

What if people don’t buy? Employ the full arsenal of audio, video, PDF’s. And raise your copywriting ability or hire better writers.

I have a “conversion formula” that is gold. But I won’t teach it for free.

Here, let me spell it out step-by-step.

1. You gotta know WHO you’re targeting and HOW you’re gonna reach them. That means knowing the blogs they read, the forums they go to, the web sites they read, WHO they look to for advice and who has the lists (potential affiliates).

Do NOT freak out if there are others selling in your niche or market. This is a GOOD thing. It shows there’s money. And it gives you joint venture partners.

2. You gotta have a HOT FREEBIE that people will crawl over broken glass to get their grubby little hands on!

People say all the time, “I can’t get anyone to join my list.” Well, guess what? You don’t got a freebie, or your folks don’t want it! That could be due to the freebie itself OR to the presentation of the freebie.

There is a thing called “signaling value.” Actual value is NO more important than the signaled value. You signal value through your graphics, words, and social proof.

Presentation is everything.

Your headline and bullet points have a BIG influence on whether or not people join your list.

I’ll repeat: It isn’t enough anymore to JUST ask people to join your email list. You have to GIVE ’em something very enticing for doing so.

If they don’t join, isn’t it rather obvious the problem is your freebie wasn’t enticing enough, either due to the freebie itself or the presentation?

Part of this process includes having a THANK YOU page and a CONFIRMATION email that are effective and get people to confirm.

3. You gotta send out emails that send people to “conversion pieces.”

Now, in “Amazing Formula” I originally told people to just send emails. The game has changed. Now those emails have to send people to selling tools like podcasts, pre-recorded videos, live streaming video, PDF’s, screen capture video. And you need to incorporate Twitter and even Facebook or Ning (Ning.com).

That WHOLE formula is explained graphically and in more DETAIL at: http://www.promodashboard.com/video/

That page is in and of itself an example of what I justdescribed. Here’s another page that personifies the process. A podcast I call “the pizza cast.”

http://www.promodashboard.com/pizzacast/

Here’s another one I did for this project: http://www.marlonsanders.com/destiny/

Here’s the thing: Creating screen video, podcasts, pre-recorded videos, PDF’s. All those things have learning curves. And a LOT of marketing is literally just about overcoming the learning curve of the tools.

The FIRST time you do any of those, it’s new, different and uncomfortable. I HATE learning curves. Which is why we do the Dashboards to begin with.

A lot of people don’t get this.

I can NEVER teach you every little thing. It’s NOT about that. It’s about overcoming the 70% or 80% or even 50% of the learning curve FOR you.

I’ve found once you “get it.” Once the initial FEAR is gone. Once you feel oriented, you can learn the rest yourself pretty easily. It’s just getting over that initial HUMP.

There’s always going to be learning curves. You’ll never have every little detail figured out for you.

But once you know the little tricks and secrets of turning video into flash, stickin’ it on a web page and linking to it, doin’ your podcast recording with Audacity and turnin’ it into flash with Sonic Memo.

Once you can do your screen recordings in CamStudio or Camtasia then add some music in the editor, add a title frame then save as the “right sized” flash file, so it streams well, you’re 90% of the way there.

This is what I’ve found.

One thing a lot of beginners don’t get is you have to learn to OPTIMIZE your graphic images (jpg’s or gif’s) and your flash audio and video so the file sizes are SMALL.

For example, this video was 8 meg: http://www.promodashboard.com/video/

A beginner that didn’t know the tricks would’ve had something 30 or 40 megabytes that didn’t stream. In other words, viewers would get that herky jerky motion.

Oh, and you see that turning CUBE at the beginning and the rockets that fire? Normally, that would increase your file size too much. But NOT when you do it right.

Marlon Sanders

Marlon Sanders is the author of “http://www.productdashboard.comThe Info Product Dashboard.” If you want to create your own info products, go to: http://www.productdashboard.com/.

Marlon’s Marketing Minute

*IMNewswatch would like to thank Marlon Sanders for granting permission to reprint the latest article.

Sharing is caring