Internet Marketing Magazine - January 2012 by Internet Marketing Magazine

JANUARY 2012

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THE STATE OF THE INTERNET From the Desk of the Editor

Online Shopping Going Viral

The State of the Internet Welcome to the first ‘State of the Internet’ address for 2012. The Internet is the fastest changing communications media in the history of mankind. It’s very hard to keep track of all this stuff yourself. In this section we will keep you up to date with the very latest of what is happening online from the big players in the marketplace. Here is your snapshot summary of the changes from the big movers and shakers online in the last month or so of 2011.

The Rise and Rise in Relevance of Social Media Social Media may not ever have the same Return on Investment (ROI) as search, but it is growing more and more in relevance, especially from a customer satisfaction and brand and perception management point of view. Gail Goodman in her Entrepreneur Magazine article ‘Social Networking Lessons of 2011’ states 4 clear lessons from Social Networking in 2011. 1. Loyal customers are your best channel to new business – so connect with them on Facebook and other social networks. The social engagement of your happy customers is also visible to their friends for a viral type effect. 2. Social Participation fuels your marketing – so respond to your customers questions, keep them talking and give them something to talk about. Include links back to your main site as appropriate. 3. Consumer opinions matter more than ever – one negative voice can start a ripple effect. Communicate with your unhappy customers and help them out with solutions to their problems. 4. Success requires testing – keep track of which of your posts and efforts create the most buzz so you can attempt to duplicate the results again in the future.

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SendTheTrend.com is an example of a new type of online store, which uses social referrals to grow their brand. They have built a social business with about 200,000 Facebook fans in less than a year using a number of social networks, including YouTube, Pinterest and Tumblr. A large part of their strategy has been ‘social credits’. This strategy is based on encouraging site visitors to share their recommendations and likes using Send the trend social credits social networks. If one of your invited friends goes on to buy you will receive a $5 credit to use on the site, which in turn encourages future sales. When ten invited friends become registered users you are rewarded with a free accessory.

Online Super Stores the way of the future The rising cost of traffic is becoming more and more a barrier to entry for Moms and Pops type Internet Entrepreneurs. We are seeing a growing number of online super stores inspired by the Amazon model providing everyday items that individuals want. The more successful of these online stores are often catering for one specific niche or market place. The real benefit of this model is relevancy so that SEO efforts can be effective more quickly.

Amazon

Those that are winning this game seem to have a large focus on both aggressive SEO and creative PR strategies. The SEO is for free listings at the top of Google and the PR strategies are for gaining widespread publicity as a result of media attention. The internet is returning back to the days of the dot com boom of 1999 where big money from venture capitalists is often sought right at the kickoff of a new project to be able to fund the planned accelerated growth.

Geo-targeting providing more relevant results Following on with the Send the Trend example from earlier on. This site is an example of a growing trend we are seeing where online stores are using geo-targeting to provide relevant recommendations to the site visitor based off the site visitors IP address. The idea here is that if the site visitor is from a warmer part of the country or world then showing them ‘summer type items’ like sunglasses and hats on the home page or recommendations section makes good sense. Obviously the exact opposite would apply for a site visitor from a colder location.

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The best thing since sliced bread… We are finding that Re-marketing becoming mainstream in Google Adwords is the best thing since sliced bread as far as easily accessible additional complementary traffic strategies that convert to sales. Remarketing is where you cookie site visitors who did not convert to leads or sales and then follow them around on the Google display network with banner ads encouraging them to come back to your site for a special offer. It is fantastic from a branding point of view, as the site visitor believes that your brand is massive, because your banners seem to be everywhere they go. The InternetMarketingDoneForYou.com team has done extensive testing on it across a diverse range of industries. Our findings have been conclusive in that it is sensational for additional impressions, clicks, leads and sales for just about any online business.

Studies Show Search Ads Drive 89% Incremental Traffic

Google Product Purge

Advertisers often wonder whether search ads cannibalize their organic traffic. If search ads were paused, would clicks on organic results increase and make up for the loss in paid traffic? Google statisticians recently ran over 400 studies on paused Adwords accounts to answer this question.

Google is currently going through a process they are calling ‘spring cleaning’ to shut down a number of products that didn’t have the impact that they were expecting.

Google ran what they called a “Search Ads Pause Study”. What they found was that 89% of the traffic generated by search ads is not replaced by organic clicks when ads are paused. This number was consistently high across all major verticals.

New Number 2 in the Browser World Google didn’t enter the Web browser market until 2008, but its free Chrome Browser has just recently become the second most used in the world behind Microsoft Internet Explorer. This puts Mozilla’s Firefox now 3rd on the pecking order. Google’s success with Chrome is largely a result of the product’s speed. Google is pushing the boundaries with Chrome as they wish to make the web richer with new HTML5 standards. Wsj.com reports that Microsoft recently introduced a revamp of Internet Explorer but has continued to lose some share. The company’s browser had just over 40% of the global market in November, down from 56.6% two years earlier, according to StatCounter.

It seems a good move for the company to simplify its product offerings. Applications on the chopping block include Knol -- a Wikipedia competitor, and Google Gears, a technology for letting Webbased apps store data offline; it’s been superseded by HTML5. Google is also killing Wave, which we thought was dead already. Another product that was targeted for purge earlier this year is the Gmail-based social networking experiment Buzz.

YourBrand.xxx Triple X domains went on sale early in December. The idea behind them was to provide the ability for porn sites to be moved over to .xxx domains so that innocent web surfers wouldn’t accidentally stumble across these adult sites.. Early reports show that the take-up of .xxx domains is largely a brand defensive move to secure company brand names and protect brand reputations. Those snapping up the domains for protection will never use them. No one outside the porn industry wants to run a live .xxx domain website. There are even logic questions being raised about whether those in the adult industry will move their businesses over to .xxx sites, as surely it will make it easier for regulatory bodies to regulate or block them in the future.

Google + Business Profiles

Google Chrome

In November, Chrome had a nearly 25.7% share of the global market, up from 4.7% two years earlier, according to StatCounter. Firefox had a 25.2% share in November, down from 32.2% two years earlier.

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Google has recently given the official go-ahead for businesses to create profiles on the Google+ social network. “So far Google+ has focused on connecting people with other people,” Google SVP of Social Vic Gundotra said in a blog post. “But we want to make sure you can build relationships with all the things you care about—from local businesses to global brands—so today we’re rolling out Google+ Pages worldwide.”

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The new Google+ brand pages look similar to Google+ Profiles, except for the little square icon that designates that it’s a Page rather than a Profile. Users can add brands to their circles, check out their information and browse their photos. When users add a brand to their circles, it increases that brand’s follower count. This is similar to the .xxx domain where brands are making defensive moves to secure their name in Google +. Whether or not Google + gains any real momentum is yet to be seen as there is much resistance from the Internet Community who already feel like they have enough profiles to update and keep track of.

From the Desk of the Editor Internet Marketing Magazine is now approved by Apple and can be found available in Apple’s new Newsstand. Early stats show that readership for Internet Marketing Magazine from Apple’s platforms is now 3 times higher that it was a month ago. As mentioned previously back issues of Internet Marketing Magazine are now made available free in the iTunes App Store. We previously had these at 99c but have now made them freely available. This is the first issue where we have changed releases from bimonthly to monthly, so you can expect to get your Internet Marketing Magazine fix more regularly now as of roughly the 7th of each month. The first ‘Internet Marketing Magazine’ member’s monthly webinar went off with a bang in early December with a nearly full house. Based on the heart-felt feedback that came in there were some members who had massive ‘wake up calls’ about opportunities to make their business websites more effective. It’s great that it was able to have such an impact on people. We’ve made that available in the member’s area now.

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Another Webinar that I did in the last month was for Andrew and Daryl Grant’s ‘Our Internet Secrets’ mentoring group and it got great feedback as a real ‘eye opener of what’s coming up online’ so I’ve decided to share it with members also. This webinar was on ‘The Future of the Internet’ and is based largely off my learning’s from several site visits to Google and Yahoo in recent months. Credits go to Yahoo and Google for much of the content of that one. All existing members will have received a link to that in early January. It’s in the member’s area in the new ‘Webinar Training’ section. Future of the Internet

You will now find the new Surf Stitch Founders Interview audio in the ‘Audio Expert Interview’ section. Justin and Lex are two incredibly smart guys with an amazing track record. Please make sure you spend the time to hear what they have to say in the full audio interview. It’s free, so if you haven’t been sent your link to the member’s area please feel free to sign up for it today at http://internetmarketingmag.net/become-member/ Until next time... Wishing you the best of success online

GregCassar

Greg Cassar Internet Marketing Strategist & Editor Internet Marketing Magazine

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SURFSTITCH.COM: FROM ZERO TO $30M SALES ONLINE Founded by Justin Cameron and Lex Pedersen in late 2008 in a backyard garage, Surfstitch.com has since grown into one of the Australia’s and Europe’s premier online stores with over 200 employees, 2 massive warehouses, selling over 250 brands and sales of over $30m. From an ecommerce point of view what these 2 guys have achieved is nothing short of amazing. Greg: Welcome to the call Justin and Lex. Justin and Lex: Thanks Greg! Greg: It’s great to have you here. I’m sure that our readers and our listeners will be very interested to see what you’ve achieved in such a short period of time.

we have recruited, retained and focused on the key management skills of all our staff, and at the same time we have focused on a technology platform that will allow us to grow quickly to scale and execute on high volumes that we’ve been inundated with over the last 36-48 months as our business has grown from 0 to a $30 million + business.

For those who are not familiar with SurfStitch can you tell us a bit about your brand and what makes you unique online? Justin/Lex: We started our business in 2008, which at the time focused primarily in the surf fashion space and then transitioned into more of an unlimited sport, surf, fashion type model. We broadly market to the fashion conscious 15 to 35 year olds within Australia, and now into Europe. We have a pretty board spectrum of customer base now which we are trying to grow as quickly as we can. Greg: Have you always been mates or did you get together more just on the business front? Lex: We were real mates prior to this, we spent a lot of time surfing. But professionally I came from a surf retail background and Justin has more of a finance background. Greg: A good mix of complementary skills there. The rate that your business has grown and continues to grow is phenomenal. What do you think have been the main keys to growing from the backyard to dominant Online Retailer in such a short period of time? Justin/Lex: The key has been to ensure that

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us now managing all their brand globally, both individually and on a multi channel retail platform format. So it allowed us to grow and scale much faster than we could without this agreement in place. Greg: In terms of vision, goals and mindset, did you go into this right back at the eBay days knowing where you wanted to take it and how you were going to get there? Or did it just sort of evolve over time? Justin/Lex: I don’t really think we had a vision that we would have a $30m business and a European office in the time period that we have. We had an ambition that we’ll try out something on Ebay and at the same time rolling out a retail bricks and mortar footprint on Sydney’s Northern Beaches.

SurfStitch Australian Warehouse

Greg: The strategic relationship you did with Billabong I believe is a masterstroke, and not something that I would have thought of before now. How did that come about? Justin/Lex: Initially, we struggled with getting supply from major suppliers and Billabong being the larger industry supplier, we need to really look in a way to lock them in as a supplier. Initially we entered more of a standard supplier relationship with them, but within about 12 months they approached us about taking a strategic position within our business. And it makes sense in the perspective of locking in a key supplier and also removing them a competitor. That is, in our view a play, which has resulted in

We look at it like this - you take a lot of chances and a lot of risks. We have made a lot of mistakes and learned a lot of lessons. The key strength that we think we have now that gives us a competitive advantage is our inventory management systems that we have invested a lot of time and money in, as well as our platform which provides, from our perspective and even Billabong’s, a key Intellectual Property advantage to the market place. You know I’ve said, a lot of risks were won, we took a lot of chances and we made a lot of mistakes but now we’ve developed a system that will take it to the $100m and $200m model. There is also now the opportunity to partner with other retailers to leverage our platform and our IP as strategic joint ventures.

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Surfstitch 200+ Brands

Greg: I think what you guys have done really is the future of Internet Marketing with major retail ecommerce stores. Many entrepreneurs step up to the plate and have a few swings and misses before smacking it out of the park. Have you guys had similar ‘learning experiences’  or were you able to be successful on your first attempt? Justin/Lex: I don’t know about that, but we have been lucky because sometimes timing is everything. We were the first in the market and we capitalized on that first market opportunity and I think what we have done is that we continue to reinvest aggressively. We continue to push hard and leverage our business as much as possible because at the end of the day we see the key to our business is scale. What we’re trying to achieve is that we want this business within 5 years to be a $100m business and the only way to achieve that is to push harder and aggressively. We will continue to learn along the way, but hopefully now we have a platform in place that will allow us to get there without too many major hurdles or competitors. Greg: With 20,000 unique visitors a day to your site, your traffic strategy is phenomenal with dominant SEO, aggressive Adwords campaign in certain areas and also PR with main stream media exposure. What have been your big ‘take aways’ about which forms of traffic have been great ROI for you and your business? Justin/Lex: Google is obviously an aggressive spending platform that we initially utilized as more of a CAPEX (Capital Expenditure) spend. We saw it as an investment in our business. The return on JANUARY 2011

investment initially was pretty poor as we just tried to drive traffic to the website, but now we have developed a model where we manage ROI daily and we have, I think a solution where we focus on the combination of SEO and SEM. The Christmas period as of today, we have 60,000 visitors to the website, the volumes have pushed so quickly now that we are getting to a stage where managing SEO and SEM as a combination is extremely important. At the start, like a lot of new businesses, you have to experiment and we experimented but we made sure that we had a big budget and we pushed hard on SEO and then we developed SEM thereafter. We focussed on getting our website right from an SEO structure perspective so that we would not need to keep writing big checks to Google over time. Greg: When consulting to online commerce stores, your site and also Zappos are the two that I refer to most. The customer experience on Surfstitch is very well engineered with the online chat, the excellent drilldown of categories and slick buying process with steps 1 through to 3. Do you spend a lot of time on analytics, video tracking tools or data mining to figure out what’s really working and how to enhance that user experience? Justin/Lex: We do a lot of A/B testing, some heat mapping, we got quite a large of user experience committee here. Any changes that are made or enhancements are not done lightly. We spend a lot of time analysing not just the visual components of it but also the results that it drive. We still think there are a lot of improvements to be made. We have got a new check out process coming in the New Year. We have just reworked the navigation. From early indications of measurements that’s performing well.

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We’ve got the feedback functionality on the page and we read that daily as gospel. We get several hundred valuable comments every day and we use that more than any thing else to steer our user experience development.

conversion rates. I think we’re now at a place where we can do a lot of scenario driven options as well. We did look into the Magento solution. There are pros and cons, but it’s out of the equation now. Obviously at the moment, we’re an ATG operator but we would never tie ourselves to one platform. We always maintain flexibility in our business model to allow us to move to a solution that makes sense for us economically and from a commercial perspective around IT.

Surfstitch Homepage

It’s an unbiased form of communication. Our site visitors will really tell us what they think. We get plenty of praise, which we enjoy but we look at the constructive criticism for ways to improve. Greg: I see you’ve gone down the Oracle ATG path for your digital platform. What was it that swayed you to use this technology over other comparable platforms like Magento? Justin/Lex: We experimented like a lot of Internet companies do during their initial stages and went with a platform which was custom built. We found that a lot of custom built site, where you enter or you encounter capacity constraint issues particularly given that we were growing so quickly. So we have to look for a solution, which we thought that would take us to $100 million opportunity. I think we are unfortunately or fortunately went with the process of over-capitalizing, where with the ATG platform which is really for businesses of $50m plus or $100m plus. It’s an expensive solution but it has huge benefits in relation to peak capacity constraints, flexibility and more importantly the opportunity to customize all aspects of the platform from shopping cart personalization to a myriad of different things which increase conversion rates. Today, I was looking at our conversion rates at 6.5% percent, which was unheard of when we started our business 3 years ago. And the ATG platform has given us a process and a platform to improve our

Surfstitch Product Checkout Design

Greg: Thanks a lot guys, I really do appreciate your time. I know that the Internet Marketing Magazine readers can certainly learn a lot from what you have achieved in a relatively short period of time. I don’t think I’ve come across anyone who has grown at the same speed and also that has as professional online store as the SurfStitch presence that you built there. My thorough congratulations, and well done on that. Justin/Lex: Thanks Greg, good talking to you. Visit surfstitch.com and have a shop around the site. Go through the checkout process to see how slick and effective it really is.

Lex Pedersen and Justin Cameron founded Surfstich.com in late 2008 in a backyard garage and have since masterminded its growth into one of the Australia’s and Europe’s premier online stores with over 200 employees, 2 massive warehouses, selling over 250 brands and sales of over $30m.

EDITORS NOTE: The full audio interview is now available for you in the new members area. If you are already a member you will have been emailed a link to it.

Lex Pedersen and Justin Cameron

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THE TRUTH ABOUT SAVING TIME By Dr. Joanna Martin

Finding time, saving time, managing your time – these are the challenges most entrepreneurs and business owners face on a daily basis as they seek to turn the commodity of time into the precious resource of money. In fact, time is probably the most undervalued resource on the planet. Even the most savvy and go-getting business owners amongst us fritter time as if it had no value. The truth is, knowing how to use our time effectively is the key to massive business growth. Ironically, we all have the same amount of time in a day but not everyone uses it productively, i.e, with the end goal of creating real, sustained business growth. In fact I wish I had a dollar for every business owner or entrepreneur who tells me ‘I just don’t have enough time to . . .’ Many of us have been on traditional time management courses where we are taught various strategies on this very concept. But the truth is many of these courses are counter-intuitive to how we think and more importantly how we ‘feel’ and that’s why just like a new year’s resolution which starts well but fades well before the end of January, our efforts on time management also fail. So, to truly manage time effectively whilst staying sane and yielding everincreasing profits, what is the secret? What I want to do is share my nontraditional time strategies and give you a simple five step recipe you can apply to your business.

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But before I share these steps, I just want to bring awareness to what time trap you might be falling into. When you know which is your specific time battle, then you are best prepared to fight it. So these are the 3 common traps around time management which entrepreneurs and business owners almost always fall into: 1. Working Too Hard This entrepreneur or business owner is what I class as a ‘go-getter’. They work extraordinary long hours, including evenings and weekends and leave little time for their personal life. This person might have decent profits but is often stressed and overwhelmed and does not have ‘the time’ to shift their business to the next level. 2. Working Too Little The other type is the opposite because the lack of structure in owning their own business often provides too much freedom and too much space. This person often procrastinates, puts off tasks and as a direct result, doesn’t see much, if any, business growth. 3. Working Too Busy In between the above two types is someone who always appears busy but actually doesn’t get that much done. The priority often falls on lower-profit generating tasks, like answering emails, rather than real business growth strategies. Whether or not you see yourself in these categories, invariably most people will recognize elements of themselves in one or the other. Get really clear on your particular time battle then it’s as easy at the following five steps to managing your time effectively.

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find someone to write your copy for you, or to make your sales calls or to do the things you hate. There might be an outlay in hiring someone or finding an outsourcer, but the profit you generate from focusing on what you love to do is far greater than the expense. Step Four – Take Time Off Give yourself a break to allow new business ideas or concepts the space to come in and then return to your business supercharged. I recommend taking at least a couple of hours each week off from the business to spend giving yourself ‘you’ time. Spend it creatively or even playfully if you can. This then feeds back into the business in the form of new ideas, concepts or products. It might sound counterintuitive but it works.

Time Is Money

Step One – Batching For Energy Management It’s not the amount of stuff you have to do that exhausts you- it’s the changing between different energies. It takes a different kind of energy to make sales calls, than to review your numbers for instance. So batch similar tasks together, preferably on different days of the week, i.e., copy on Tuesday, book-keeping on Wednesday, sales calls on Thursday and so on. Step Two – Shift From Activity Into Fruitful Stop putting your focus on non-profit yielding activities, things like emails, phone calls etc. Instead direct your focus to what is going to bring you in the greatest profit, i.e, creation of your high-end product, setting up a passive income stream, putting on a live event or webinar where you sell your product or service. Step Three – Outsource The greatest jump in business growth we experienced in our business was when we began to out-source tasks. So

Step Five – Balance Your Energy As important as managing your time, is managing your energy so keep a very close eye on your energy moment to moment. This is especially important for women -try to follow your own natural rhythms as much as possible. Also create the space to improve or increase your energy which will then be reflected in your enthusiasm and ability to work. Follow these five steps and you have the foundation for creating more time in your business which doesn’t just wear you out, but which also yields massive profits. In your business, you can’t afford to not manage your time effectively if you want to get ahead of your competitors. Knowing how turn time into money is the biggest goal of all entrepreneurs and business owners but very few ever succeed on a stratospheric level. The truth is when you manage your time as if it were the most precious resource on the planet you will skyrocket in your business and generate more money than ever before. When you master time, you become successful. For more information on time management secrets go to www.shiftlifestyle.com/timesecrets

Dr. Joanna Martin is an internationally acclaimed speaker and sought-after educator who has taught over 55,000 people on three continents. She is one of the world’s most successful and inspirational speakers having taken her own business from stand still to 7 figures, and two countries, in 12 months. She is widely regarded as a Lifestyle Design Specialist. She started her working life as a medical doctor, then an actor before launching her career as a speaker. She now runs what she calls “The Ultimate Lifestyle Business”.

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7. Always provide an affiliate program for any product or service you sell online. Without affiliates and JV partners (higher paid affiliates), I wouldn’t be where I am today.

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HOW TO FIND UNIQUENESS IN THE MOST CROWDED MARKETS By Alexi Neocleous The owners of this business found uniqueness in one of the most competitive – and “impossible-to-differentiate – markets in the world. I love coffee. I love the smell of coffee.

And it was sublime, truly sublime. Maybe the BEST coffee I’ve had. It was so good that I’m writing about it in this article. But where’s the marketing lesson? It can be summed up in one word: uniqueness.

I love the color of coffee.

The word “only” is a very powerful word. It is exceptional in fact… especially when it’s backed up with a stunning proof element.

And I love sitting in cafés.

In this case, the proof element is “Sardegna”.

Most of my writing and thinking takes place in cafes.

We all know the Italian’s are coffee purists. So having Sardegna in the tag line bypassed my “gate keeper mind” so I walked into the café to ask about the coffee.

So it’s fair to say I’m quite savvy when it comes to coffee. Not to mention the many different brands of coffee available.

But notice what’s special about the tag line.

So when I saw an umbrella with this brand and

It doesn’t say “The Taste of Italy” because that has become a commodity. The tag focused on a specific – even exotic – region of Italy. Hence it conveyed uniqueness in their message via its specificity. Thankfully their coffee was as good as she claimed. If it wasn’t, then I wouldn’t be writing this article. And I wouldn’t be telling you about it. This underscores something else that’s important… When you have a unique product – and you deliver on that uniqueness – the throughput can be massive. Furthermore people can’t help but talk about it. This is how powerful brands are created. This is how market leadership is fostered.

The Taste of Sardegna

tag line, I took notice: Why did I take notice? Well it’s because I’ve never seen this brand before… and because I’ve never seen the claim, “The Taste of Sardegna”.

This is how business legends are made. Alexi Neocleous is one of the leading direct response freelance copywriters in the world. Having worked with business owners large and small, he’s known as a copywriter who gets fast results for his clients.

“What the heck is this?” I wonder. So I walk in to ask the barista about her coffee… and why it’s so special. She responds with a magical statement, “It’s the only one of its kind”. “Hmmm… the only one of its kind, huh?” I ask skeptically. “Is the coffee good?” I ask her. “Try it”, she challenges me.

Alexi is the author of some of most well received advertising and marketing courses in the industry, titles which include Advertising Secrets, The 3 Minute Ad Formula (which was co-authored with friend and top colleague Scott Bywater) and The Kaizen Marketing System. Grab your free copy of ‘The Marketing Domination Report’ at www.marketdominationreport.com to find the one simple change that can grow your profits exponentially.

So I did. JANUARY 2011

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THE WORLD’S BIGGEST WEBSITES ON THEIR LAUNCH DATE Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither were the world’s biggest sites. Check out these images of how the biggest sites online looked on the day they went live.

Yahoo.com:

Google.com:

Youtube.com

March 1995

September 4, 1998

February 2005

Amazon.com:

Facebook.com:

Twitter.com

1995

February 2004

July 2006

Image Source: Mashable.com JANUARY 2011

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REACHING YOUR BUSINESSES’ EXACT TARGET MARKET WITH FACEBOOK ADS By Greg Cassar As business owners we need to get our marketing message in front of people who are interested in the product or service that we offer and who have a high probability of taking action or requesting further information in our sales cycles. Facebook Ads in the last year or so has been a game changer in that it has never been easier in the history of the internet or offline to put your marketing message in front of your exact target market. Facebook Ads are the ads that show up on the right hand side of Facebook. They consist of a headline, a web link, body copy and an image. We’ll get more into those components shortly. Facebook is an artificial intelligence engine… what I mean by that is it ‘learns’ as people interact with it. As it’s users click ‘Like’ and ‘Share’ Facebook takes note of these things and builds an ongoing profile about a user behind the scenes so that advertisers can show the right ads to the right people.

Facebook Ad Example

Facebook Ads makes it easy and cost-effective to quickly set up and manage your campaign. Free Offers work better than Selling directly from Facebook because it is more like a ‘Coffee Shop’ where people are going to hang out, than it is the ‘Yellow Pages’ where they are going specifically to buy.

Let’s dive into exactly how to get your message in front of your market so that you can action this today for your business. If you log in to Facebook it doesn’t matter where you are, just scroll down right to the bottom that says, “Advertising” and click it. Then at the top, click “Create and Ad”. The first thing we need to think about is “Destination” and we have two main choices here. We can send traffic to a landing page or what Facebook calls an external URL, or you can send it to a Facebook page, which is a Fanpage on Facebook. Sending to Facebook pages gives you cheaper traffic, but sending to external URLs as a general rule, if you know what you’re doing from a landing page design, will give you better leads as far as lead to email goes. So it really depends, if you want to build “Likes” or if you want really cheap traffic, then I would say, send it to a Facebook page. But if you want to build email opt-ins, then the reality is you’re probably going to get that better via an external URL at this stage. Design Your Facebook Ad

With the body, you need to test different things. You have got 135 characters there. Sometimes I use the full 135 characters but I also found that by using less characters and by having a bit more space around your ad can also improve your click through rate.

Besides from the headline the Image is the most important part of the Ad as it will really draw the eyeballs. As a general rule, I found that if you can add an image with an attractive female in it that definitely helps as far as clickthrough rate goes. Another great technique is to use writing on your image or put a border around your image. If just want to target people in a particular city, you could start targeting people by just their state or just by their city. For example here, I could just target people who lived within Newcastle and a 50mile radius. As you can see this works really well if you’ve got a geographical type of business.

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With demographics you can target people within any age range that are likely to be interested in your business and turn into customers of yours.

Now with likes and interests, it sort of works like keywords, similar to what you would do with a Google Ad, but you can only choose from the keywords that they give you. Once you have written your ad and set who you want to show it to you have basically got two main advertising options: - “Pay for Click” which is CPC, this means that every time someone clicks on your ad, then you’re going to pay a certain amount eg. $0.64c. If you get a good clickthrough rate on your ad then the amount that you end up paying for you clicks will be reduced as Facebook rewards effective advertisers with lower click cost. - “Pay for Impressions” which is the CPM or cost per thousand impressions. Which means every time your ad is shown a thousand times, you have to pay that amount. And if you think about it, if you’re showing it to a large number of people, this cost really can get away on you. So it’s not for beginner Facebook marketers but it is for more advanced Facebook marketers. As a general rule, I would recommend you start with Cost per Click. Once your Ad is approved you’ll receive an email in your inbox stating that your ad is approved and that you will then start receiving impressions and clicks. It’s important to check every day initially and basically monitor your ad to make sure that it’s moving in the right direction.

Facebook AdTargeting

You can now say whether that you are targeting just men or just women. What’s really good about this is you can write different ads for males than you would for females. Say for example, you were trying to sell the benefits of a car. The men may be more interested in the power and the women more interested in the sleek design. That’s just an example but you could see how writing a different ad for men and for women can really work there.

That’s effectively the process for creating your first Facebook ad for your business. People treat Facebook as an authentic part of their lives, so you can be sure you are connecting with real people with real interest in your products. Because of the laser targeting you can reach the right people in the right locations with the right interests at the right time in their lives. Give it a go for your business today.

Greg Cassar is the leading Internet Marketing Strategist behind the scenes of many of the biggest Internet marketers in Australia and abroad (InternetMarketingDoneForYou.com). You can follow Greg’s latest updates by subscribing to Internet Marketing Magazine at InternetMarketingMag.net for the new members area and the latest issue updates.

“If you don’t believe in your product, or if you’re not consistent and regular in the way you promote it, the odds of succeeding go way down. The primary function of the marketing plan is to ensure that you have the resources and the wherewithal to do what it takes to make your product work.” - Jay Levinson

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The Success Quadrant and Your Path to Success Online By Janet Beckers Over the past 3 years I’ve been privileged to mentor thousands of entrepreneurs worldwide and there is something important I have noticed: Entrepreneurs tend to fall into one of 4 categories when building their business. Even though the steps to create success are the same for each entrepreneur (there are in fact 5 and a half steps), the ORDER in which they follow them is different for each group. If you have been modeling successful people and not getting the success you expected, it is very likely because you are following the path in the wrong order. Let’s see if you can relate to one of the following categories. The Success Quadrant

Star Gazer You have a passion for your topic and entrepreneurial spirit. In fact, you may have a problem in that you are passionate about many things and aren’t sure which is the one you want to focus your business on. You may not be clear on who your target market is and what the unique offering is you bring to the market but you know, if you can just get clear on this, you will be successful. Cash Flow is a bit challenged. You know you don’t have much money to invest in your business so, until it starts paying its own way, you are going to have to learn how to do everything yourself. Star Gazer

Shooting Star The Shooting Star is very similar to a Star Gazer except for one big difference. You have money to invest in your business. This has advantages but also disadvantages. The advantage is you know, once you are clear on your niche and the value you bring to that niche, you can move fast. You can afford to outsource the areas you really don’t want to master and so can concentrate your time and energy on the things you are good at.

Shooting Star

Star Blazer

It can sometimes be even more frustrating being a Shooting Star than a Star Gazer (I’m sure Star Gazers will disagree though). Sometimes you can feel like a sprinter stuck at the starting line. You’re psyched for the race, you know you have the ability to win but you can’t take off until the Starter Gun goes. This brings us to the disadvantage I mentioned. Because you have the resources and ambition to succeed it can be very easy to have a false start and use your valuable resources on a business that was never going to succeed. Star Blazer A Star Blazer differs from a Shooting Star and Star Gazer in that they are very clear on the niche / topic they will be building their business on. Further than that, they are already helping people in their area of expertise and passion and getting results. This doesn’t mean you are making money though. You may be helping people for free or for buying you lunch or a coffee. You may have transitioned into charging for the solutions you provide but you don’t have near enough paying customers and it can be difficult to get them to continue spending money with you. You suspect you’re not really charging enough though it’s a bit of a Catch 22. You’re worried if you charge more, you may end up with fewer customers. There is also a chance you are getting results for people but you are not in your own business. You may have an employer and you now want to go out on your own. Cash flow is likely very tight and it’s about time you started getting paid what you are worth!

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Super Star A Super Star may seem like they have achieved success, and they have to a great extent, but they may not agree with you. In fact, they haven’t got time to disagree with you! This is because they are getting excellent results with people and are in great demand but they are at risk of burning out. Very often a Super Star may be in a service or coaching business and often working one-on-one or on projects that require a lot of their input. Sometimes they are running lots of workshops and travelling which they enjoy but they only have so much time available to do this and they’re a bit over the travel. Super Star

If this sounds like you, you’re probably hanging out for a holiday but know when you are away your income will drop. Your income may have reached a ceiling because the only way to bring more money in is to work more hours and you’ve reached your limit. For some Super Stars, there’s a chance you have already started creating information products and group programs so you can leverage your knowledge and start making income that is not tied to the number of hours you work. If that’s you, that’s brilliant. Your challenge now is to make this your major source of income so you can really enjoy the success you deserve. Cash flow is likely quite variable for Super Stars. Like Shooting Stars you have resources to invest in your business but you also know that some months can get pretty tight. You’d love cash flow to be much more predictable.

Can you identify which Star Type you are on the Success Quadrant? To help you identify what group you fall into, I have developed a simple quiz and Blueprint for you to follow depending on what “Star Type” you are on The Success Quadrant. You can do the quiz and get your one page action plan here TheQuadrantQuiz.com. It will only take you a few minutes and we’ll let you know where on the Success Quadrant you fall. In the next few issues of the magazine I’ll go into detail on the 5 (and a half) steps to Shine Online so you can make 2012 your year to shine. I’d love to know what Star Type you are. You can share over here, join the conversation and ask any questions.

The Quadrant Quiz

Janet Beckers, a.k.a.”The Wonderful Web Woman” is the founder of a successful and dynamic online community. She is an international speaker, best-selling author and mentor and has helped & inspired thousands to create their own success on-line. She is a multi-award winner, including most recently, Australian Marketer of The Year. She is passionate about helping YOU use the Internet to create a passionate and profitable business that is uniquely “you”. A business that allows you to “Shine Online”, attract the perfect customers easily and make a difference - while having fun.

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Business Growth Lessons from Brad Sugars By Greg Cassar

Recently while attending Dale Beaumont’s ‘Business BluePrint’ event in Sydney I had the pleasure of hearing Brad Sugars speak. I found his strategies for business growth had quite an effect on me, so I wanted to share some of those main learning’s with you. But firstly, a bit about Brad. He built his company, ActionCOACH, up from nothing to now being ranked, by the USA’s Entrepreneur magazine, as the 16th fastest growing franchise in the world, and 53rd of the top 500. And this has been achieved in just twelve years!

‘5 Ways to Massive Profits’ by Brad Sugars

In just fifteen short years, Brad Sugars was able to grow the business at such a pace that it now operates out of offices in Australia, New Zealand, USA, England, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Malaysia, Singapore, China, The Philippines, Thailand, Canada and Mexico with its Global Head Office is in Las Vegas, Nevada.

5 Ways to Increase the Profit of Any Business

With over 1000 franchisees and $100m turnover each year Brad is definitely worth learning from. Here were some of my big takeaways from his teachings.

There are 5 parts to every business chassis:

Buying and Selling Businesses Buying and Selling businesses is a major component of what he does these days. Say a business is doing $1,000,000 profit per year. He’ll negotiate well and buy the business for 2 x profit ($2,000,000). He’ll then apply his proven systems for increasing the profit of the business to roughly $4,000,000. The next step in his system is to sell the business for 5 x profit ($10,000,000) within a year to two. Not bad going, especially as he has a few of these on the go at any one time.

Brad teaches that every business has what he calls a business chassis, and you can make it run like a VW or like a Porsche with a few simple proven modifications.

1. Leads: The total number of potential buyers that you had contact with in the last year 2. Conversion Rate: The percentage of people who did buy 3. Number of Transactions: The average number of times one of your customers buys from you in a year 4. Average Dollar Sale: Add up your total sales and divide it by the number of sales 5. Margins: The percentage of each and every sale that’s profit Multiplying these figures together ultimately determine your profit. So when you increase each of them by as little as 10% it will result in a massive 61% increase in profit. Spend a few minutes and watch the video above ‘5 Ways to Massive Profits’ so that you understand it well.

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The Quickest Way to 10% additional Profit

What should the business owner be doing in the business?

The quickest way to 10% additional profit is to raise your prices by 10%. Most business owners are afraid to do this. I did it with my consulting clients earlier in the year and didn’t lose any clients, so it definitely works.

Aim to grow your people who will grow your business. Also focus on improving the effectiveness of your people so that they are more efficient. As a business owner you should be focussed on the following:

The next best thing is the up sell. McDonalds famously do this well with their ‘Do you want fries with that?’. Brad gives another example that he’s uses successfully with legal firms “by the way does your Legal Will need updating?” Repeat business is by far one of the easiest ways to increase the business. Most people don’t have enough repeat business because they don’t sell enough stuff or don’t keep in touch with their customers enough to offer them new opportunities as they become available.

• • • • • • • •

Marketing Visiting new potential customers Recruiting great people Tracking and measuring Developing and improving systems Education and training Competition analysis Strategic planning

Building A Foundation for Massive Wealth It was very interesting to hear someone who is working towards becoming a billionaire explain how to build a massive foundation for wealth.

A business or a job?

Brad explains that the biggest investors in the world are venture capitalists – they buy businesses. This is not by chance, it’s because it’s the most leveraged wealth creation vehicle.

I find that most people’s businesses are more of a job in that they fail to meet Brad’s definition of a business. He defines a successful business as ‘a commercial profitable enterprise that works without me’.

Brad Sugars advises that to build massive wealth you should learn and master business, and then real estate and then shares/trading (in that order, and not all at the same time).

So based off this in the example of a hairdresser – cutting the hair is the job and getting leverage and doing the numbers is the business. As a business owner Brad Sugars teaches that you should be focusing your time on efforts where you do the work once and get paid long term, not doing the work once and being paid once. He believes that the reason that many entrepreneurs are working so hard is because their businesses are not working properly.

Clear business and investment rules should be defined and stuck to so as to make it formulaic. Also niches within each area should be carefully chosen and then stuck to and repeated so that it becomes cookie cutter rather than re-inventing the wheel every time.

How Success Happens Dream x Goal x Plan x Action = Success. So dream big, don’t worry about how it’s going to happen. Set a goal and then plan out how to do it and put it into action each and every day. Brad Sugars advises, “life is only 4,000 weeks, so write a bucket list and do it”.

Brad Sugars is the founder of the highly successful ActionCoach and is a serial entrepreneur. He is the author of 14 best selling business books. Start with the book ‘Instant Cashflow’ and read on from there.

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