Millions of people around the world tuned into the Games of the XXVII Olympiad for the extraordinary displays of physical strength and prowess offered by the world’s greatest athletes. They weren’t disappointed.
Neither were the savvy business entrepreneurs who watched the games from Athens for insights and ideas to advance their marketing efforts.
What do the Olympics have to do with marketing, you ask?
Plenty… if you consider that the same strategies that led to victory on the track and in the field in Athens this year can also be used to bring you world-class success in your sales efforts. Here’s how:
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A Sprinter’s Strategy - Hold Nothing Back
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For the short distances that sprinters cover, a burst of speed that never lets up is the winning strategy that leads to gold medals. From the instant they hear the starting gun, sprinters put every ounce of available energy into a full-out, full-speed, nothing-held-back run for the finish line.
The headline of your marketing message needs to be as explosive as a sprinter’s start and twice as fast.
Consumers are hit with thousands of advertising “pitches” every day. They probably ignore as many as they notice. In order for your message to hit the mark, it needs to come out of the gate strong with all the power you can muster.
Sprinters bulk up on carbs for energy to win the race. Headlines bulk up on benefits, arouse curiosity, present what’s new, and offer a quick and easy solution to win the hearts and minds of consumers.
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A Marathoner’s Strategy - Pace Yourself
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A runner who comes “off the blocks” at break-neck speed and expects to go the distance in a marathon may pass competitors early on, but he/she will likely run out of steam long before the finish line. To stay in the race for 26 long and grueling miles, you need a carefully modulated and always flexible strategy
A “Big Picture” perspective is also what’s required to keep your business in the race for years to come.
If you model your approach on the marathoner, use short-term initiatives to get you through “the first mile” (free gifts to customers) and you’ll have far-reaching plans to make sure that you’re still going strong at Mile 26(upselling, back-end sales, etc.)
Just as importantly, you’ll have a flexible approach to all your strategies. A marathoner never knows what’s around the next corner, and neither do you. (In business, only hindsight is 20/20.) So be prepared to “go with the flow,” and make changes in both your short- and long-term plans.
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The Hurdler’s Strategy - Clearing All Obstacles
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When the race starts, a hurdler needs to know in advance the obstacles that are going to come along — when, where, how big — so that he/she has the right strategy in place to leap over each and every one before making the last dash to the finish line.
A successful marketer must be able to hurdle sales resistance in every way, shape, and form.
When you craft a marketing message, you need to anticipate why a consumer might say “No” — too expensive, too risky and then help them “hurdle” that obstacle with a bonus, benefit or iron-clad guarantee.
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A Relay Racer’s Strategy - One Step at a Time
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They say there’s no “I” in team, and the relay race demonstrates the importance of a group of individuals working together like a well-oiled machine to achieve the highest level of success. In order for the team effort to work in the end, a series of carefully executed “hand-offs” are required.
Pass the baton in your sales message with a flow of benefits and resistance-killers that seamlessly move the customer from “start” to “finish” (aka a purchase)
A well-crafted sales message starts with an irresistible headline that “hands off” to a compelling opening paragraph, that in turn leads to benefit-oriented lists, testimonials, ordering, instructions, etc. The key is that as each section draws to the end of its “run,” it passes the baton to the next section in line without every losing the consumer’s interest and attention.
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The High Jumper’s Strategy - Raise the Bar
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There’s only one way to win in this event — jump the highest. If your competitor jumps 7-feet in the air, you must be prepared to go to 7′1″. You won’t be a winner if you equal your competitor’s effortsyou need to do better.
Don’t be content to be “as good as” when it comes to what you offer. Raise the bar to a new level that your competition can’t surpass.
If your competition is offering shoes at “Buy 1 pair, get a 2nd pair at 50% off,” then you should offer “Buy 1, get 1 free.” If the “other guy” is offering a mechanical product, then you can offer the same product but include “free annual service call.”
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The Long Jumper’s Strategy - Go Further
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Long jumpers seem to defy the laws of gravity — flying through space high above the ground. Like high jumpers, medal-worthy long jumpers must put in the extra effort it takes to go beyond what their competitors are able to achieve. And they don’t win by miles; they win by feet… by inches by tenths of an inch.
An extended warranty or guarantee is the best way to “out distance” your competitor regardless of how much further you ultimately go.
You don’t have to be twice as good as “Brand X,” but you must be better. If they offer a 12-month warranty, then you should offer 18 months. If their “free trial period” is 30 days, make yours 90. And don’t be worried that your “we go further” offers will bankrupt you. Studies show that expanded guarantees help convince many people to buy even though few take advantage of the guarantee.
It’s good to know that even if you’ll never be an Olympianeven if you can’t bench press 500 lbs. or run a mile in under 4 minutesyou can still “go for the gold” — by the bar by the box by the Brinks Truck full! Just translate what you’ve learned from the sports arena to the business arena!
Copyright 2004 Quick Turn Marketing International, Ltd.
Dan Lok is the World’s First Quick-Turn Marketer, with a proven track record of selling over $ 17.3 million dollars of merchandise and services. He’s the rebel copywriter who’s created hundreds of money-making ads and sales letter for over 39 different industries. And now you can get inside the head of one of the world’s top copywriters without paying a dime at http://www.QuickTurnMarketing.com
Tags: advertising, copywriter, copywriting, Internet marketing, marketing, small businessadvertising, copywriter, copywriting, Internet marketing, marketing, small businessShare This
Every entrepreneur should have a business mentorsomeone who’s been through everything that they’re going through and can share their wisdom. Whether he knows it or not, my business mentor is none other than former Enron Executive Ken Lay. For many, he might not make the most obvious choice of a mentor, with his track record of lying, cheating, and stealing his way to success, but that is precisely why this choice is so appealing to me.
As his first duty as my business mentor, Ken (Mr. Lay to the rest of you) can grow my social network. This guy knows everybodylikely because he’s paid most of them off at one point or another. He can introduce me to people who will come in handy when I need to get out of felony conspiracy charges. This is just one of the many valuable aspects of our business mentoring relationship.
I can trust Ken to be my business mentor, because he knows that if he makes one false move the government will be on him like white on rice. Much like the old saying that the safest time to fly is the day after a crash, I feel like the safest day to have Ken as my business mentor is right after a huge financial scandal that covers the television, newspaper and radio waves for years, and gets used as water cooler fodder even now.
Furthermore, he’ll be my business mentor for freeunlike many online services that try to charge for business mentoring services, Ken just got away with the biggest scandal in business history. Thus, he doesn’t really need my money, because we all know that he has a few million stashed in a bank somewhere overseas. I get a free business mentor, and he gets to pretend that he’s still somebody specialit’s a true symbiotic relationship.
But, one of the most important reasons that I choose Ken as my business mentor: he’s already made every mistake in the book, so I can utilize his expertise in steering me away from potential business disasterslike billion-dollar financial scandals, or particularly “creative” bookkeeping practices. Also, as my business mentorshould the need arise, Ken can point me in the direction of a good lawyer to get me out of any particularly sticky situations.
Since Ken doesn’t have anything better to do right now than be my business mentor, I can’t see any reason why he’d decline the request. After all, it’s not like he’ll ever be hired at another company worth a hill of beans, so be may as well use his spare time to promote entrepreneurship in the global community. By being my business mentor, Ken can pay off his debt to society, one lie at a time, all the while keeping me from heading to prison.
So, it’s easy to see why Ken Lay makes the best business mentor everI don’t even see any other choices. So, over the course of our business mentoring relationship, I’ll expect him to help me with some creative math, then help me to tuck that creative math away where no pesky FBI agents can find it. Like I saida true symbiotic relationship.
Ben Jordan an Austin, TX based x-Fortune 500 Marketing Consultant, now a rogue direct response internet marketer. His true love is helping small business owners, not become a 90% statistic that will fail historically. To receive for FREE “The Science of Getting Rich” e-book, please visit http://www.mymillionairementor.com
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Since search engines are the first stop for people on the Internet looking for goods or services, the position your website appears in search results is an important factor. If your URL shows up far down the results list, the chances of the consumer never finding you increase incrementally.
Once you achieve a high search engine position, it is essential that you make sure you maintain the high ranking you have worked so hard to achieve.
This means you must come up with a strategy create a search engine position report to monitor your search engines positions. This strategy is crucial to the success of any marketing campaign. Think of your search engine positions as your online portfolio. Would you let your stock portfolio be ruled by chance and market fluctuations, or would you keep close tabs on your stocks so you could buy and sell when the time is right? This is the way you must consider your search engines positions.
Be aware that at first, after you have launched your search engine campaign and done all the right things to increase your rankings, you will most likely see a continual upward climb. What you need to be on the lookout for is the moment that upward climb reaches a plateau. When this happens, your search engine position campaign moves into stage two,
the monitoring and protecting stage.
In stage two, do not be concerned about the short-term fluctuations in your positions that you will see in your search engine postion report. These are similar to the subtle rising and falling of stocks in a portfolio. Short-term movement is an integral part of the whole process. It’s the long-term changes that you must watch for and prepare to act on immediately.
Analyzing the long-term trends of search engines positions is imperative. The way in which search engines rank websites may change at the drop of hat. If you are unaware of these changes - many of which are subtle yet can be deadly to your ranking - your position may drop to the bottom of the list before you can get your bearings. To prevent this kind of precipitous drop, you must create a system to monitor your positions on a monthly basis.
Devise a search engine position report to chart to keep tabs on your top ranking positions or your top pages, and make sure to watch “the market” closely.
Each search engine uses a formula to compute website rankings. When a search engine changes this formula in any way, it may raise or lower your ranking. Some search engines use a number of different formulas, rotating them so that a formula doesn’t become overused or outdated. Depending on which formula is being applied, your search engine position may suddenly drop or rise in rank significantly. Therefore, you must check your positions frequently in order to catch when a search engine changes formulas and what effect it has on your positions.
You must also deal with your competition - a crucial factor you must always be vigilant about. Your competitor’s position may suddenly rise, automatically lowering your position. Or their position may drop, pushing your position higher. Each month, expect position changes due to the continual changes that are occurring in your competitor’s position, and be prepared to adjust your marketing strategy to compensate for decreased rankings.
Monitoring these fluctuations will also give you vital information about how to improve your website to increase your position in search results.
Of course, you must discern what the most popular search engines are in order for your monitoring efforts to be effective. Right now, there are ten popular search engines that direct most of Internet traffic to your sites. The challenge you face is that these top ten may change from month to month.
This means that your must not only monitor your search engine positions, but you must also keep track of the ranking popularity of the search engines you are monitoring. Find out which search engines people use most frequently every month and be sure to live in the present!
People are fickle about their favorite search engines, and it takes constant vigilance to follow their dalliances. The search engines they loved when you first launched your campaign may be old news in the next few months. You must adjust your list of engines according to the whims of the Internet users. Check out http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/netratings.html for a current list of website favorites.
Another factor to monitor carefully is a sudden drop of your positions in all search engines. This is not the same as monthly fluctuations - this is a neon red warning sign! It could mean a number of different things. It all your search engine positions have plummeted, it may indicate that search engines spiders - those sneaky programs that seek out your site and rank their positions - have found some type of problem with your website. If you have recently changed the code, for instance, the spider may become utterly confused and consequently drop your positions disastrously. If a spider creeps up on your
website when it is down for adjustments or changes, you may actually disappear from a search engine index entirely.
Or a search engine may drastically change its formula, and suddenly all of your website come up as irrelevant. If that search engine is a current favorite, it may create a domino effect, causing all of your position to drop in all search engines.
Some search engines rely on the results from other search engines, and it is vital that you know which engines these are and keep track of all the engines they influence. The biggest problem here is that search engines will sometimes change affiliations, and this can create a major shift in the geography of the Internet. For example, recently Yahoo decided to display only results gleaned from Google. So you must not only monitor your own positions, but you must keep abreast of seismic shifts in the landscape of the Internet as a whole.
Finally, pay attention to your keywords. Keywords are the foundation bricks of the entire search engine system, and they demand individual scrutiny in your monitoring efforts. If you have found that a number of your positions have plummeted, it may mean that a page of your website has become invisible or inaccessible to search engine spiders. Or the competition for that particular keyword or phrase has recently rocketed into outer space. In either case, you must act quickly and efficiently to regain lost ground.
Your search engine marketing campaign is an investment. If costs you time and money on a continual basis. Protect this investment as diligently as you would your financial portfolio. In the same way, track your positions using your search engine position report from an objective perspective, and monitor your positions on a regular basis. Make sure your time and effort reap rewards by keeping your eye on the big picture - your long-term marketing campaign.
Christian Whiting is the publisher of Internet Profits. Dedicated to bringing you the best tips, tools, and resources to help you make more money with your online business. http://internetprofits.bushido.net
Tags: internet, keywords, marketing, promotion, search engine, seointernet, keywords, marketing, promotion, search engine, seoShare This
