By Small Business Marketing Guru Dan Kennedy

I am about to tell you how to add $25,000.00, $50,000.00, maybe $100,00.00 a year to your yearly income – without spending even a penny more on advertising or marketing.

One of my featured guest speakers at a past SuperConference was Michael Vance. Michael worked side-by-side with Walt Disney for a number of years.  As I was listening to Mike, I made a mental note to start talking about a Walt Disney quote about marketing that I used to use a lot.

What Walt Disney said about Marketing is:

“Do what you do so well – and so uniquely – that people can’t resist telling others about you.”

In every field, there are “masters”.  People just so darned good at what they do that people are compelled to tell others about them.

Mike Vance is that kind of speaker, and there are darned few in that category.  Actors like Paul Newman, Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro.  The salesman I used to buy my cars from, Bill Glazner, at Sanderson Ford in Phoenix – he puts every other car guy I’ve ever seen to shame.  There are a couple chiropractors I know who put on such a great “report of findings” (their equivalent of the Printing Audit) that they enjoy 100% conversions and can easily sell large dollar “pre-pays.”  There’s a shoe-shine guy at the Atlanta Airport who still rubs wax in by hand, snaps the towel with authority, slaps the leather, makes the brush sing.  And this is important: these people are “master performers.”  They are not just masters at whatever technical thing they do, they are masters at presentation.

So, here’s a very simple, very practical question:  after customer buys from you for the first time, do they – without any prodding from you – rush to the phone, call an associate, and tell them about the amazing buying experience they just had?  Are the first words out of their mouth to the next person they see about you?

If it is, here’s the economic impact:  your need to invest money in acquiring new customers will diminish over time as your business converts to being 100% referral driven.  This means you can take all the money you now spend on advertising, direct mail, telemarketing, etc. and put it into your pocket instead.  This means you will have more people calling and waiting in line for you than you have time, because each client will multiply.

“Mastery” can quite easily be worth an extra $50,000.00 to $200,000.00 or even more to you each year you remain in this business.  (Bank it all at even modest interest and in just five years you can retire a cash millionaire.)

To get that good, you must dedicate yourself to doing so:  I’ve always been impressed with the late Yul Brenner, who performed the “King and I” a record number of times on Broadway – and still rehearsed his lines, gestures and facial expressions everyday, before every performance, right up until his last one.  How many times have you written out your own, complete sales script word for word?  Recorded it and listened to it on tape?  Role-played it with family or mastermind group members?  Practiced in front of a mirror?  Ever?  This month?

Get this:  I can predict your future bank balances if I know what you read, what you listen to, what educational functions you attend, who you hang out with and what you work on (practice) regularly.  Oh, and years ago, Joe Karbo wrote this wonderful ad headline:  are you too busy making a living to make a fortune? Are you?

Discover how you can sneak into the closed door meeting and eavesdrop on the free-wheeling, no holds barred discussions of arguably the most elite and extraordinary group of marketing and moneymaking “masters” ever assembled in one place, at one time.

DAN S. KENNEDY is a serial, multi-millionaire entrepreneur; highly paid and sought after marketing and business strategist; advisor to countless first-generation, from-scratch multi-millionaire and 7-figure income entrepreneurs and professionals; and, in his personal practice, one of the very highest paid direct-response copywriters in America. As a speaker, he has delivered over 2,000 compensated presentations, appearing repeatedly on programs with the likes of Donald Trump, Gene Simmons (KISS), Debbi Fields (Mrs. Fields Cookies), and many other celebrity-entrepreneurs, for former U.S. Presidents and other world leaders, and other leading business speakers like Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy and Tom Hopkins, often addressing audiences of 1,000 to 10,000 and up.  His popular books have been favorably recognized by Forbes, Business Week, Inc. and Entrepreneur Magazine. His NO B.S. MARKETING LETTER, one of the business newsletters published for Members of Glazer-Kennedy Insider’s Circle, is the largest paid subscription newsletter in its genre in the world. https://gkic.infusionsoft.com/go/newmifge/Vlopezev1

What is the true value of your business?
By Dan Kennedy

Consider not only your immediate short term needs but also your long term hopes and in that process very carefully consider the value of the customer or the client. Every business, every product line, every service organization even if it is distanced from the ultimate consumer by a distribution chain you’re still dependent on an actual consumer for its lasting success.

The greatest asset a business can ever possess is a known list of satisfied, loyal customers.

Let me give you a simple example in small business.

When I first moved to Phoenix I was investigating various businesses that I might acquire. One that attracted my attention was a bookstore located on a main street in the center of downtown Phoenix.

My observations revealed that the store’s inventory mix was poorly selected for its primary clientele, which is business people and office workers. Considerable floor space in the store was being wasted and the store did have excellent traffic during the day.

The asking price for the store was a little high as asking prices usually are but it looked to me like the numbers could be made to work. But then I asked the problem question, “How many people with their home addresses are on your mailing list?”

This store owner after five years of operating the business had never bothered to collect his customer’s names and addresses on a mailing list. He had no way to directly reach out to his past and present customers.

He mistakenly thought that the value of a business is its lease, its furniture and fixtures, its inventory, its financial statements. He didn’t understand that none of those things are worth much without customers.

Now let’s take big business. When you buy a new car or a new stereo or a new appliance you are separated from that product’s manufacturer by a chain of distribution that includes manufacturer’s representatives, wholesalers, warehouse operators, and the store or the dealer.

Yet you probably filled out a warranty registration card and mailed it to the manufacturer.
Why is that done?

One reason is so that the manufacturer can find out who its customer is. Some manufacturers then use these lists to market. Others just accumulate the data unsure of what to do with it but at least they’ve got a customer list.

As you establish small business marketing objectives and strategies for your business I urge you to carefully consider the value of the customer.

Dan S. Kennedy is the provocative, truth-telling authorof thirteen business books; a serial, multi-millionaire entrepreneur; trusted marketing advisor, consultant and coach to hundreds of private clients running businesses from $1-million to $1-billion in size; and he influences over 1-million business owners annually through his newsletters, tele-coaching programs, local Chapters and Kennedy Study Groups meeting in over 100 cities.

NOVEMBER ARTICLE

Get Out Of the Alligator Pit At Least An Hour Every Day

Recently, two business partners came to visit me, looking for magical help with their host of terrible problems. Without dragging you through all the details, the bottom line: they have no terrible problems. They have a few minor problems. But, overall, they’re in pretty good shape. Theirs is a business that peaked at about 2.5 million, dipped to 1.6, but is now back up to 1.8, may break 2 this year “as is”, has lost some markets but gained different opportunities, and is satisfactorily if not excitingly profitable as compared to industry norms. But to hear these two, you’d think the sky was falling..

The blunt truth: they need a therapist, not a marketing consultant. Actually, they need to start with a very simple but important strategy….

Unlike most authors of most success genre content, he makes no attempt to deliver ideas that will be popular with a large audience. This mirrors my own approach as an author, spanning, now 32 years and more than 20 published books. (www.NoBSBooks.com), My scariest is No B.S. Ruthless Management of People and Profits.

One of the Eternal Truths that I quote in one of my books is: when you are up to your ass in alligators, it’s difficult to remember that your original objective was to drain the swamp. It’s easy to get so caught up in managing all the problem parts of a business that you never do anything else. And that’s a sure path to where these two partners are now: burn out. I could give ‘em the all-time killer sales letter, the best marketing campaign ever devised, and it wouldn’t do them much good…when they go to the office each day wishing they weren’t there, fatigued from first thing on, going through the motions, viewing their activities as drudgery…and end the day without any sense of measurable progress toward meaningful goals…their ‘walking dead’ aura pervades ever nook and cranny, every employee, every customer, every aspect of their business. It’s the psychic equal of trying to attract a lot of customers to a restaurant that smells like rotting, burning flesh.

Prescription: each and every day, keep a pre-set, inviolate appointment with yourself or with one or two key people, out of sight and hearing of the alligator pit, no matter how many alligators there are or how hungry they are, to do nothing but focus and work on positive, productive plans and strategies that look to the future, that are linked to goals and progress, that you can be excited and optimistic about. Simplistically, this is a means of maintaining perspective. Even better, add taking one action, getting one thing done every day, no matter what, that you know moves you forward, toward positive goals. Go home if you must knowing you spent 7 hours and 58 minutes in the alligator pit, but at least you found 2 minutes to put something in motion that will improve things.

DAN S. KENNEDY is a serial, multi-millionaire entrepreneur; highly paid and sought after marketing and business strategist; advisor to countless first-generation, from-scratch multi-millionaire and 7-figure income entrepreneurs and professionals; and, in his personal practice, one of the very highest paid direct-response copywriters in America. As a speaker, he has delivered over 2,000 compensated presentations, appearing repeatedly on programs with the likes of Donald Trump, Gene Simmons (KISS), Debbi Fields (Mrs. Fields Cookies), and many other celebrity-entrepreneurs, for former U.S. Presidents and other world leaders, and other leading business speakers like Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy and Tom Hopkins, often addressing audiences of 1,000 to 10,000 and up.  His popular books have been favorably recognized by Forbes, Business Week, Inc. and Entrepreneur Magazine. His NO B.S. MARKETING LETTER, one of the business newsletters published for Members of Glazer-Kennedy Insider’s Circle, is the largest paid subscription newsletter in its genre in the world. Learn More Here

5 Ways To Beef Up The Content On Your Site

By Steve Shaw
So your website’s up and running and your first thoughts then turn to traffic and how to get it. After all, without traffic, your site may as well not exist.

One staple traffic-building method is to use article marketing strategies to attract targeted traffic.

However, most people think that involves doing activities elsewhere to produce results back on your site.

There is one initial step though that you need to think about. Sadly it’s a step many site owners either overlook, or put way down the priority list.

Before anything else, you need to develop the content on your own website. To attract visitors, to help them stick around and come back for more, guess what? You need to have lots of reasons for them to come visit.

Here are some questions to think about:
What sort of information are you providing?
What problems can you solve?
How are you helping your visitors?
Sure, you can attract visitors when you submit articles elsewhere. But if you don’t have enough ‘stickiness’ on your own site, then such visitors may not do you much good. Without material to hold their interest, those who do show up at your site will immediately click away. It’s your job to provide the information they are looking for. It’s your job to give them a reason to stay.

So, as you start to market your site, develop a content-building strategy. By adding new content regularly you will encourage visitors to stick around.

Here are some ideas to help do that:

1. Create a Blog On Your Website

A blog is an easy way to create a regular stream of content that is fresh and helpful to your visitors. You will find your regular posts encourage previous visitors to return. In addition, your posts will continue to attract new visitors to your site for years to come.

Search engines love blogs too. Their structure is very search engine friendly. In addition, sites with regularly updated content tend to rank better. This means they pull more search engine traffic to your site.

Blogs also allow interaction with your visitors through comments. The comments mean your visitor has become engaged with your content and are more likely to return. Plus, the comments themselves help keep your content fresh, and show search engines your content has value.

The easiest way to add a blog to your site is via WordPress.org. You can either do it yourself or inexpensively hire a web developer to do it for you.

At a minimum, aim to update your blog twice a week.

This also feeds easily into article marketing. Keep the original post on your site unique, but rewrite it. You can then submit the rewrites for publication elsewhere as free reprint articles.

Re-using content like this for additional benefit is a great time saver and leveraging tool. Even better, the process can be easily outsourced.

2. Create a ‘F.A.Q.’ Page On Your Website

For most types of businesses, a list of “Frequently Asked Questions” somewhere on your site can be very helpful.

The list can be added to and updated over time as your business evolves. The nature of the questions you are asked may change too. Again, this not only benefits your visitors, but the regular updates also have SEO benefits.

An additional benefit of this type of page is that it can cut down on your support costs. If visitors can find answers to their questions straight away, there’s no need to contact you.

There is also no need to answer the same question for different visitors. If anyone contacts you with a question in your FAQs, simply refer them to the relevant section.

3. Create a List of Helpful Sites and Link to Them

Many novice website owners resist linking to other sites in their niche. They fear such links will drain all their traffic somewhere else. However, there are benefits to be had.

First of all, to attract and maintain traffic, you need to provide helpful information to your visitors. Providing a list of useful resources with websites you link out to is part of doing just that.

In most niches there are websites that are complementary to your own that people would benefit from. For example, there may be websites that provide complementary services to your own. If you are a real estate agent, think about linking to a site with a good mortgage calculator.

There are again SEO benefits from doing this. Here are a couple examples.
Link to other relevant well-ranked sites. This shows search engines your site is a central, valuable resource.

Contrast these two people. Person A visits your site, and ends up back at Google shortly afterwards. Person B visits your site, and at some point clicks through to another site. Some time elapses before Person B ends up back at Google. Person B gives Google the impression the visitor was better served. This can certainly impact how the site is ranked.

4. Add a Web Page With Information About Your Niche

Remember some visitors to your website will be complete newbies in your niche. They may have very little information about what you do or what your website represents. They may not have a clue what your niche has to offer them or why it should hold their interest.

It is certainly worth your while compiling some basic information as an introduction to your field. Focus on providing information to a newbie to your niche.

5. Create a Web Page That Catalogs Your Articles

Over time, the content on your website will increase. It can be helpful for future new visitors to see a full listing of content. This also provides them with an easy way to find what they need.

For example, you can separate your articles into sub-categories. This helps your visitors find the information they are looking for. This article ‘library’ can be a web page containing the article title, a short description, and a link to the article.

If you have a blog on your site, you can also periodically create a ‘sneeze page’ for your blog. This is a blog post that essentially links to and revisits previous posts. Usually it focuses on a particular topic. It can be very effective to get new visitors to older blog posts that they may not yet be aware of. It also helps to demonstrate the depth of value that your site provides.

So, to create a site that visitors will love, want to stick around, and be keen to return to, you need to anticipate their needs. Put content on your site to satisfy them. In brief, put your visitor’s needs at the center of your content creation strategy.

This is also the best long-term SEO strategy. You will be creating an authoritative site with demonstrable value to visitors. Other websites in your niche will want to link to you for the value you provide to their visitors. Visitors clicking through from search engines will find their needs satisfied. They will have less need to return to the SERPs (search engine results page) and click through on a competing result. They will also be more likely to remember you, bookmark your site, and return in future.

Beef up the content on your website, and you are beefing up your traffic too… for the long-term.

Steve Shaw is the founder of SubmitYOURArticle.com, the web’s leading article marketing service, used by thousands of small business owners worldwide to build traffic, leads and sales for their websites. You can grab a free report on how to attract sustainable, dirt-cheap, long-term, targeted traffic to your website at http://www.submityourarticle.com/gkic

Good Luck With Your Week Friends!!!! New Marketing Training to be announced soon!