Online Marketing Magazine - December 2013 by Pam Ivey

onlinemarketing manager Magazine VOLUME 1, ISSUE 2 DECEMBER 2013

Content Management VS Content Marketing

INTERVIEW WITH

#1 WOMEN SPEAKER for INTERNET MARKETING

TRACY REPCHUK

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

The Importance of Mobile Adoption Trends in Online Marketing AND Popular Content Marketing Trends That Will Continue

INSIDE THIS ISSUE 10 TIPS to Increase Productivity & Profits FAST by Melanie Benson Strick Online Marketing Trends for 2014 by Pam Ivey

onlinemarketing manager Magazine

4 Quick Hacks To Improve Your Business

ISBN: 978-0-9812585-1-5

Written by Pam Ivey

5 Shiny Objects

VOLUME 1, ISSUE 2

Volume 1, Issue 2 December 2013

CONTENTS

So Many I Wants, Too Few Fingers! Gadgets To Make You Drool

6 The Importance of Mobile Adoption Trends in Online Marketing

Written by Pam Ivey

7 How To Handle The Tough Stuff! PUBLISHING EDITOR Pam Ivey pamivey@ommmagazine.com

Written by Pat Mussieux

9 Twitter Top 5, 10, 50

Written by Chris Young

11 How To Know the Best Times To Post On Social Media

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Kate Smith kate@ommmagazine.com

Written by Pam Ivey

12 Online Marketing Trends for 2014

Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Coming Up For Online Marketing Managers? Written by Pam Ivey

13 Business Tip: Things You Should Think About ART DIRECTOR Mary Greenlees art@coloursomethingcreative.com

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

If You Want Your Blog To Generate Leads

Written by Andrea Kalli

Written by Ginny Victory

Written by Pam Ivey

15 Be the Victor: 8 Conditioning Secrets of the Fit Entrepreneur

18 Product Pre-Launch Tips

Melanie Benson Strick, Andrea Kalli, Anastasia Valentine,

19 Put Away The Black Dress, SEO Is Not Dead

Deb Exel & Robin Covey, Ginny Victory, Elayne Whitfield,

Pat Mussieux, Chris Young, Kate Smith, Pam Ivey

20 30 Excuses You Can Use to Connect With Your List

ADVERTISING SALES advertising@ommmagazine.com Online Marketing Manager Magazine is published 6 times per year in digital format by the International

emailed to editor@ommmagazine.com, or mailed to Online Marketing Manager Magazine, 24 Kelley Crescent, Wasaga Beach, ON L9Z 1J3 Canada

Follow OMM Magazine on Facebook: www.facebook.com/onlinemarketingmanagermagazine

Written by Pam Ivey

22 Content Marketing is the New PR

Written by Anastasia Valentine

24 Popular Content Marketing Trends That Will Continue

Letters to the Online Marketing Manager Magazine can be

Written by Pam Ivey

21 Strategy vs. Tactics

Association of Online Marketing Managers.

HOW TO REACH US

Written by Elayne Whitfield

Written by Pam Ivey

INTERVIEW WITH

TRACY REPCHUCK

DEEMED THE #1 WOMAN SPEAKER FOR INTERNET MARKETING

WRITTEN BY KATE SMITH

EDITOR’S NOTE 34 Content Management vs. Content Marketing

Written by Pam Ivey

35 Create An Editorial Calendar for Content Marketing Success

Written by Pam Ivey

37 10 Tips to Increase Productivity & Profits FAST

Written by Melanie Benson Strick

39 The Importance of a Comprehensive Affiliate Partner Resource Centre

Written by Pam Ivey

41 The Power of Joint Ventures

Written by Pam Ivey

42 The Perfection Trap

Written by Pam Ivey

44 Put Some Jet Fuel Behind Your Online Marketing Management:

Powering Up With Project Management Skills Lets You Command Your Marketing Portfolios Written by Deb Exel and Robin Covey

48 Upcoming Events

’d been hearing it for some time now. Three billion more people will be coming online in the next 3 – 5 years. It didn’t really sink in. Let’s put it another way. A quarter of the planet is now connected. It’s predicted that in just 3 – 5 years, 75% will become connected. Still, I thought, “Cool.” That was the end of that thought. Last month, I attended the Experts Industry Association Conference in California. Brendon Burchard was fantastic, as usual, and he really made this hit home for me – 3 BILLION MORE PEOPLE WILL BE COMING ONLINE IN THE NEXT 3 – 5 YEARS. Is this making an impact on you? I hope so. It is serious stuff. This flood of people – consumers - coming online are asking the “how-to” questions. How do I..? Where do I find…? This is the question you need to be asking yourself right now: “Am I being found online?” You need to decide now what topic areas and keywords you’re going to own. Who already owns these topics and keywords? What are they offering? What are their price points? How do they connect with their followers and how often? You’ve got to get this all sorted in the next 18 – 24 months... tops. Think about: • Where do you fit in and why do you matter?

• Who is your idea client? • Does your marketing message speak to them in a way that will make them act? You’ve got to nail your branding and your message. The first issue of Online Marketing Manager Magazine released in October, was a smashing success! Thank you to all of you that sent in our congratulations and feedback about the content and layout. I’m getting such a charge out of putting it together and I’m learning a ton myself as I research for articles that I’ve been writing. Send me your thoughts about this issue at editor@ommmagazine.com. Until next time, make it successful… whatever you’re working on! Cheers,

Pam Ivey, Cert SBM,CPREA,CRESS,CMP Founder, International Association of Online Marketing Managers

STRATEGY

QUICK HACKS TO IMPROVE YOUR BUSINESS

t’s hard to mesh the notion that we should be faster and more productive with the idea that we should track our business, analyze our time, and optimize what works.

If you can’t find the time to add systems to your business, try a little addition by subtraction. Let’s look at the fast, simple things that you can do to make your business more profitable:

01 Cancel services that aren’t working for you. If you’ve been paying a monthly or yearly fee for services and software that you’re always “getting ready” to use... get ready to dump those services and reclaim your money. Ask yourself if the monthly services that you’re using are really living up to their promises. Are they paying for themselves right now, or are you going to need other elements to take full advantage of them?

WRITTEN BY PAM IVEY Look, it’s important not to give up on something easily, but every business has something called “sunk costs”. That’s the point where things aren’t going to get better, and the more you invest, the more you’re going to lose. Look for elements of your business that are keeping you from accomplishing MORE and doing something BETTER. Look for the items in your business that you can quit. And if you aren’t sure that you can quit those elements, try to step back and find ways to tackle the same tasks more effectively.

03 Learn more efficient ways of doing business. The time that you spend struggling to finish a task can sometimes be spent asking more efficient and advanced people their methods for doing things.

Look for more cost-effective solutions, and look for services that combine two or three features that you’re already using.

Look up blogs and books discussing the very specific stumbling blocks that are impeding your process and start applying those fixes.

There are many times that you’ll want to “make the switch” but you’re hesitant because you’ve got data there, or the process of changing over would take time that you don’t have.

Also, there are plenty of paid services that charge for convenience - so if there’s a skill you can learn to save yourself some money, take the time to learn it.

But when you finally block off some time and make the move, you’ll be surprised at how good it feels.

Don’t treat this improvement as a one time thing. Sign up for newsletters and resources that will gradually improve your skill. You won’t learn a skill overnight, but a small amount of time can give you compound results.

Look for companies that give you great benefits to switch. Usually, the services that are “stickiest” know that it’ll take a generous set of benefits to draw new customers.

02 Develop the courage to quit. Sometimes, you get stuck with a business plan that just does not benefit you.

PAM IVEY

Remember that cash is an amazing source of leverage. If there’s a task that’s critical to your business and requires a lot of skill, consider leveraging your money and hiring a specialist to do it. Cash is always tight, so if you’re smart, you can get a lot for a little.

is a tireless champion of the online business industry and considered a Thought Leader in Online Marketing and Outsourcing. Known for her warm and engaging manner and wide-ranging, comprehensive skills and experience, she has inspired countless entrepreneurs and other professionals to achieve greater heights in their businesses. Always at the ready to help, she taps into the Think Big Mindset by offering training programs for ‘newbie’ to seasoned VAs, online marketing professionals, freelancers from all industries, as well as online solopreneurs and entrepreneurs. Her flagship program, Online Marketing Manager Certification begins this February, as does the new International Association of Online Marketing Managers. Learn more at www.OMMCertification.com.

4 | ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013

TECH

SHINY OBJECTS

SO MANY I WANTS, TOO FEW FINGERS! GADGETS TO MAKE YOU DROOL

SMARTBOT (US $200) SmartBot is a programmable smartphone robot for entertainment and education that uses your Smartphone (Android™, iPhone®, iPod® or Windows Phone®) or a programmable development board (Arduino®, FEZ®, Netduino®, Gadgeteer®) as its brain, sensors and interfaces. It gives robot fans a complete mobile robotic platform, open and affordable, which lets them develop robotic applications, play games, enjoy interactive services and learn robotics. Source: www.overdriverobotics.com

LOMOGRAPHY SMARTPHONE FILM SCANNER (CA $69) The Smartphone Film Scanner offers Lomographers and analog lovers a quick, easy and portable way to scan 35mm films. Simply turn on the Smartphone Film Scanner backlight, insert your film, take a photo of it using your Smartphone and use your phone’s camera or the specially-developed App (iPhone and Android versions available) to edit and share. In an instant, you’ll end up with a digital version of your film which can be archived, emailed, posted on social media sites or printed. It also offers unrivaled speed and convenience when compared to other film scanners. Source: www.lomography.ca

FITBIT FLEX (US $100 - $130) A powerful Force for everyday fitness, this sleek wristband is with you all the time. Stay motivated to keep moving with real-time stats right on your wrist. Track steps taken, distance traveled, calories burned, stairs climbed and active minutes throughout the day. At night, track your sleep and wake up silently with a vibrating alarm Source: www.fitbit.com

OLIVE ONE ($400-$500) Play all your music through one simple touch-screen interface. We mean ALL your music. MP3s, FLAC, ALAC, WAV, AIFF, and iTunes tracks. The music streaming apps you use, like Spotify, Pandora, and Deezer. All controlled from your iPhone, iPad, Android device, or directly from the ONE touchscreen. Just connect speakers and you’re good to go. Source: www.myoliveone.com

MEMOTO LIFELOGGING CAMERA (US $279) The Narrative Clip is a tiny camera and GPS that you clip on and wear. It’s an entirely new kind of digital camera with no controls. Instead, it automatically takes photos as you go. The Narrative app then seamlessly and effortlessly organizes them for you. The camera has no buttons. As long as you wear it, it is constantly taking pictures. It takes two geotagged photos a minute with recorded orientation so that the app can show them upright no matter how you are wearing the camera. Source: www.memoto.com

ETON BOOST TURBINE (US $80) For everyday or emergency use, this backup battery pack with hand turbine power generator will keep you all charged up and connected. It features a rechargeable 4000mAh lithium battery for power, anytime, anywhere. It provides two full charges to most smartphones plus charges tablets. Source: www.etoncorp.com ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013 | 5

MOBILE MARKETING

MOBILE ADOPTION TRENDS

THE IMPORTANCE OF

IN ONLINE MARKETING

id you know that according to Pew research an amazing 91 percent of all Americans have a mobile phone with over 50 percent of them owning a smart phone, and using them as their main source of access to the Internet? As an online marketer that has to tell you something very important. It seems that eventually the PC will be replaced by smart phone and mobile technology. It may seem hard to believe right now, but it’s coming. As an online marketer it’s important to be aware of trends so that you can be prepared.

ACCESS & FUNCTIONING OF TECHNOLOGY IS IMPROVING FAST As the technology improves adoption of new apps takes less and less time to reach critical mass. A great example is the fact that it took only 3.5 years for Facebook to reach 50 million users, and now some popular apps can reach that critical mass in just a matter of days. As technology becomes more advanced over time, the speed at which any one new online application can reach critical mass will only become faster. A technology that may seem strange to you today, could be the most popular method of online marketing tomorrow. Stay aware.

ANDROID TAKES THE LEAD Currently, in terms of which operating systems are selling Android is expected to take the lead by a wide margin in 2014. With over 50 percent of the average user now using mobile as their main method of getting online, activity using apps 80% of the time, this says a lot about where you should focus your 6 | ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013

WRITTEN BY PAM IVEY online marketing efforts now and in 2014. If your online real estate is not responsive, it needs to be starting today. Otherwise you’re going to miss out on over half your target audience.

SOCIAL MEDIA TAKES CENTER STAGE The other important trend is that social media will continue to grow in popularity in 2014. Most people get their news, information and entertainment via their mobile devices online via social media than any other method today. What’s more, even if your market is still watching television, they have their mobile devices by their side and are using them at the same time to access social media apps, banking apps, email, and more. A high percentage of consumers even sleep with notifications on, which puts you in very intimate connection with your audience.

CONSUMERS SEARCH & ASK THEN BUY Being aware of the fact that consumers are searching for information online using their mobile devices after seeing it in person, on TV, hearing about it on the radio, or from a friend will help you realize that you need to keep mobile and social in mind during all your online marketing endeavors if you want to stay ahead of the pack in 2014. Whether consumers choose to purchase online, which more than half do, or choose to purchase offline, which about 37 percent do, they use their mobile devices to get more information first. Knowing this fact can help online marketers keep their messages accessible to consumers.

STRATEGY

HOW to HANDLE the

TOUGH STUFF!

WRITTEN BY BY PAT MUSSIEUX

id you think it would be ‘easy’ having your own business? I was driving through a small business

are growing your business and you are adding to the team. Personalities get in the way. Different energy creates different synergy. Emotions come into play. There can be competition among team members. Miscommunication is always a challenge – because it happens. We are all people!

There are so many misconceptions about what it takes to succeed as an entrepreneur. Anyone who knows me

03 Opportunities. You might find it a bit weird

area of town last week and commenting to my friend that many people just have absolutely NO idea what it takes to have a business and to succeed in business.

knows that I like to keep things simple. So, taking this simple approach, I want to speak to a number of different situations in business that we all face and give you some of the simple steps I take to handle them.

01 Clients. We all have them. We all want more. And

when you get more …..well, tough stuff can come up. As I’m often heard saying: “Where 2 or more people are gathered.....” And when it comes to clients, you are going to have situations where clients aren’t engaged in the work that needs to get done to grow their business – they don’t pay on time or they don’t pay at all – some back out of their signed contract with you. They lie to you. They let you down. They disappoint you.

02 Team Members. Tough stuff happens when

you are just starting out in business and need to hire team members to support you. Tough stuff happens when you

that I added this one – but, think about it. As you grow your business and certainly as you get more successful, more and different opportunities come your way. When that happens – all kinds of ‘stuff’ comes up. What if I’m not good enough? What if they don’t want to pay me what I’m worth? What if they start comparing me to others in my league? What if they don’t like me?

I don’t think we talk about the tough stuff often enough because we are so focused on learning and doing everything it takes to GROW the business. The interesting part is we all go through it – often times we haven’t learned, or been trained, on how to deal with a lot of it – and so not only do we make mistakes (and costly ones, at that) but a lot of the emotional tough stuff festers and we allow it to eat us up.

PAT MUSSIEUX

is fast becoming regarded as a highly valued Canadian mentor for women entrepreneurs taking her own business from zero to a multiple 6-figure home-based business in less than 4 years. Much of her success can be attributed to her expertise in marketing, mindset and money! Pat Mussieux is a business coach, author, speaker and radio host. You can reach her at www.wealthywomenleaders.com ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013 | 7

STRATEGY There are some things that I have learned and steps I take to handle this and I wanted to pass it on to you.

01 Entrepreneur – know thyself! What I mean by that is – how do you best handle tough stuff? For me, it’s got to be first thing in the morning. That’s when my energy is high and my focus is clear. Anything that is a challenge gets handled before noon. My emotions are intact. I make business decisions – and do not come from an emotional space. Deal with the facts. 02 Keep it simple. When tough stuff happens, we tend to overcomplicate things – as we do in most other situations. Keep it simple – whether it’s writing a response to a difficult email, or an in-person meeting to deal with an uncomfortable situation. Keep it simple and, again, stick to the facts.

03 Work with a coach. It’s so easy to lose perspective when dealing with difficult situations or with difficult people. And it will happen. So, working with a coach is one of the best ways to stay grounded – get perspective – learn from someone who has been there and who can guide you. 04 Deal with it quickly. Tough stuff happens to all of us. Don’t let it fester. Get a handle on the facts – create a plan – and work the plan. The sooner you deal with the tough stuff, the more positive energy you will release which enables you to move on and continue to serve the people you are meant to work with. Then move on……..

Is this ALL it takes to handle the tough stuff? NO. But it’s certainly a good place to start. It has worked for me and it can work for you, too.

How do you handle the tough stuff in your business?

7-Step Guide To Growing Your Business By Getting Out of Your Own Way!™ Home Study System (3 CDs + Workbook) PLUS 20-minute personal laser coaching call with Pat You can learn to grow your business by creating systems and processes, and shifting your thinking about what’s possible. The tool that will get you there is my “7-Step Guide To Growing Your Business By Getting Out of Your Own Way!” All the tools, scripts, templates, and examples are handed to you on a silver platter. All you need to do is order your copy, work through the Guide, one step at a time, and then enjoy working with your ideal clients, make more money and live your best life!! So easy. 7-Steps to Growing Your Business By Getting Out of Your Own Way vr101.infusionsoft.com/app/manageCart/showManageOrder;jsessionid=168CCBD93C41DB05C9007286CDF0598B

CLICK AD TO VIEW WEBSITE

8 | ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013

SOCIAL MEDIA

Twitter

TOP 5

10 50

WRITTEN BY CHRIS YOUNG

hen we think of social media, we tend to think of followers and fans. We want to know how we can get more followers, likes, circles, etc. There is a simple theory I use for that – If you want more followers, be worth following. But that’s a topic for another article.

These are 100 people you’ve identified as potential game changers. You’ll roll them through this list to keep a better eye on if they’re what you’re looking for to help you with your business.

Today I want to talk about following. That’s right. Who should we follow to make our Twitter experience more beneficial to us? Sound selfish? Not at all. The better our businesses, the more people we can help. As business owners, we don’t have much time to waste, so we must get the maximum return from everything we do. Getting the best return on our time investment in social media is no different.

I always narrow down to a top 50. These are 50 people you should follow that will help guide you in your business. Mentors so to speak. You will want to read their material, as it will help benefit you and your business in the long run. These people can make a difference in what you learn and how you conduct your business. They will vary as your business evolves so don’t be afraid to add and remove people regularly.

THE ROLLING 100

THE BIG 5-0

CHRIS YOUNG helps clients build customer relations that stand the test of time

amidst turbulent economies, fierce competition, and limited finances. Chris’ insight paves the way for small business owners to establish a unique brand and develop a positive and lasting client rapport. Chris roadmaps the best strategies for owners to engage and turn consumers into referral-generating brand evangelists using social media and the power of being a connector and builder of community. A staunch supporter of the entrepreneurial spirit, Chris helps entrepreneurs avoid mistakes, shorten their learning curve, and tell their story, all while instilling the confidence that they can succeed. You can connect with Chris on Facebook at http://facebook.com/ChrisEhYoung ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013 | 9

SOCIAL MEDIA THE TOP 10 These are people that you want to get closer to. Whether that means a face-to-face meeting or guest posting on their blog. These are people you will follow very closely. You’ve discovered some partnerships or joint ventures that will be beneficial to both parties. You will use social media to get to know them on a more personal and professional level. Offer to help them. Promote their business ventures. Promote their products. Let them know you are not in it solely for yourself. Help them.

THE FAB 5 Your top 5 WILL make a huge difference in your business. These are the people that you absolutely must meet and forge lasting relationships with. If it feels like maybe you’re stalking these people, you’re probably on the right track. You’ve identified these people as mentors and partners. They have the knowledge or skills you desire. They’ve walked the path you wish to take. They can show you the way. They can help take your business to the next level and beyond. Whatever your goals are, these are the people that will help make them happen.

These lists should always be kept relevant and current. If you remove someone from a list, add someone new.

Forget the followers for now. They will come and go. I’ve moved people like the late Chet Holmes from my Rolling 100 to my Fab 5 in pretty short order. The evolution from casual Twitter chatter to phone conversations wasn’t quick or smooth at times but it was worth it. His wisdom and life advice still sticks with me today and has made me a better person. He truly changed who I am and how I look at sales. Forget the followers for now. They will come and go. If you want to maximize your Twitter experience, follow and connect with people who will help you with that. It takes time and effort, but everything worthwhile always does.

INFOGRAPHIC - CLICK IMAGE TO VIEW

10 | ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013

SOCIAL MEDIA

HOW TO KNOW THE BEST TIMES TO POST ON SOCIAL MEDIA

WRITTEN BY PAM IVEY

f you’re using social media to help market your business or your clients’ businesses then it’s important to understand how to ensure that the audience you want to see the message, sees it. The only way to do that is to take the time to know your audience, check the stats the social media collects, and test your assumptions.

than numbers when it comes to getting your message out to your audience at the right time, and in the right place. Your message could be perfect, but if no one sees it, it won’t matter much. The numbers matter.

KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE All marketing boils down to this fact. You can’t escape it. You must do your due diligence and take the time to study your audience. If you want results you have to know your intended audience intimately. If you want to inspire your audience to act on your information you have to speak to them in their language.

Once you have created some assumptions from what you know about your audience, and what the statistics tell you, do a test. Choose two or three times to send out the same message. Then check the numbers. Which time got the most opens, shares, and action. If there isn’t much difference you may need to run a test on your headlines and message too.

You must know where they live and work, as well as what they do for fun. You must understand how much money they make, and how much of it they can afford to spend on extra items. You must understand what things cause them problems and how your products and services solve their problems and be able to communicate that via social media.

Do not skip A/B testing in your marketing endeavors. If you don’t test your actions you will never know for sure if what you’re doing is truly working as well as it can work. You won’t be able to expand upon your successes and do better each marketing campaign. By testing, you will always keep doing better.

CHECK THE STATS

Finally, it’s important to take what works, expand upon it, and improve your social media marketing. If one thing is clear when it comes to social media marketing and marketing in the digital age is that change is continuous, due to that, you’ll always have to keep studying your market, analyzing the data, and testing the results if you want to rise to the top of the social media marketing game.

All social media has their own stats which you can read yourself. They have over all stats, plus usually the ability to look at your personal stats. Combine what you know about your audience, with what the social media you’re using says about when people are more likely to read your messages, then start from there. Many people ignore the numbers, but nothing is more important

TEST YOUR ASSUMPTIONS

ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013 | 11

ON-TREND

ONLINE MARKETING

TRENDS for 2014 WHAT’S COMING UP FOR ONLINE MARKETING MANAGERS?

arketers need to be aware of what’s happening today and in the future. While no one has a working crystal ball you can glean from various sources and industry news some facts that are likely to be true about Online Marketing in 2014. By keeping aware of trends you will become proficient at making good choices when it comes to creating marketing budgets for the coming year.

CONTENT IS STILL KING The importance of content in your online marketing efforts will likely never change. Well-written, relevant, keyword-rich content will always be a central component to your online marketing arsenal. It’s important not to stuff your content with keywords. A good rule of thumb is to keep your keywords under 2 percent and ensure that they are natural and not forced, after all, you also want the content to be informative and engaging to your audience.

THE SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING EXPERIMENT CONTINUES Social media marketing has become very important for online marketing purposes. From Twitter, to Facebook, to Pinterest, to Google + and whatever may come in the future, business owners must keep using social media as part of their marketing efforts. It’s important to do some research to determine if your market uses that particular social media, test it out, check your metrics, and try different social media to see what works for your business.

INFOGRAPHICS & IMAGES WILL BECOME MORE IMPORTANT Due to the popularity of infographics, memes and other types of images on the Internet that help disseminate facts and information fast to your target audience, this trend will increase in 2014 and probably in years to come. YouTube.com, SlideShare. com, and mobile technology have made images very popular forms of marketing. Images are easy to digest, easy to share, and they have a higher potential of becoming viral.

FOCUSED SIMPLICITY RULES People are busy. They don’t have time to read a long thesis about many different topics. Keeping your message boiled down, simple, and easy to digest will improve marketability in 12 | ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013

WRITTEN BY PAM IVEY

2014. In addition, focusing each message on one main benefit you’re offering via your product or service to your customers will become more important. The question “What’s in it for me” can be answered very clearly and simply and should be. Stay focused, and keep it simple. Don’t over complicate everything.

RESPONSIVE DESIGN IS IMPERATIVE

As mobile technology grows building responsive online real estate is essential to spreading your brand’s message. More and more people will be using mobile technology to not only access your information, but to digest it too. It’s imperative that you create all future websites to be mobile friendly in addition to being PC friendly. That’s where responsive design comes in rather than creating separate entities for each type of device, you just create one simple design that works on all devices.

TARGETED MARKETING GETS MORE PERSONAL

The technology now exists, as you’ve probably become aware, for advertisers to track via cookie technology what you search for, what you have viewed and read and target advertisements directly to people in a more personal way. Let’s be honest, while this freaks out some people, it thrills marketers who can now create more targeted advertisement directly to the people who are looking for their product. Marketers realize that most people need multiple exposures to a product, service or brand to make purchasing decisions. The market of one is finally here.

SOCIAL MARKETING IS PART OF GOOD SEO

Important components of SEO include: Appropriate inbound links, relevant content, and now social media engagement. The days where you could purchase directory links and rank high in search results are over. Today, relevant content that draws attention from authority sites and creates natural links are more important. You can particulate in guest blogging, send out press releases, get syndicated, and participate in building relationships via social media where everyone shares content, discusses content, and interacts together to build brands. If you see one thing that winds through the important online marketing trends for 2014 it’s that marketers must behave in more natural ways to attract their target audience. It’s even more content focused than ever. Online marketers are going to have to get more personal, spend more time creating valuable content, and engaging with their audience to make the cut.

LIST BUILDING & LEAD MANAGEMENT

BUSINESS TIP: THINGS YOU SHOULD

THINK ABOUT IF YOU WANT YOUR BLOG TO

GENERATE LEADS

WRITTEN BY ANDREA KALLI | PHOTOGRAPH BY RENJITH KRISHNAN

very business worth its salt has a site or a blog that helps them promote their business online. It lets people look into the details of the product or service and it provides the business with another point of conversion. The site itself is easy, as it needs to be professional. The blog is infinitely more casual and thus is where people make mistakes.

THINK ABOUT WHAT YOUR USERS WILL FIND USEFUL

Becoming a great blogger or conversationalist is about talking about the other person. The same could be said of generating leads. Talking about your product is well and good, but visitors aren’t there to read about how excited the new product makes you. They’re there to find out how it can make that stain on the carpet go away. So tell them about stains, dirt, and how your product gets rid of them. Tell them about how it will solve their problems. Make it about them and the issue you’re about to resolve for them.

EVERY BLOG POST MUST END WITH A CALL TO ACTION

Never forget that your blog is primarily there to help your business. It isn’t about leaving them with a better impression of you, though it is beneficial if it happens. It is about showing them the value of your product, and then showing them how to purchase it. Not doing so would be wasteful, and could end

ANDREA KALLI

Since 2005, has been instrumental in helping entrepreneurs save time using laser-focused strategic marketing methods to grow their business. Andrea is an action-oriented virtual assistant who offers a variety of targeted marketing services for the online business entrepreneur, including: High-impact Internet Marketing and Social Media Marketing Action Planning and Support, Keyword Research and Website SEO Services, WordPress Business Sites and Content Marketing Support, Product Launch Support, Content Repurposing and Recycling Strategies, Audio and Video Products Editing and Support. Known as The Implementer, her primary area of focus is to work with entrepreneurs who want to take the next steps in their business to strategically build their platform, establish their expertise, and to create a movement around their passion. Learn more about Andrea and her services at www.virtualassist.net. ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013 | 13

LIST BUILDING & LEAD MANAGEMENT up helping the competition. Without a call to action, they may wander off your site and think about other products. You do not want that. End each post with a call to action and a link to your site or wherever you can turn them from readers to customers. An easy call to action would be asking readers to sign up to receive new blogs posts via email. Take that up a notch and entice them with a free report or other goody when they do sign up. Your website does have an opt-in form, right? You can even put your opt-in form at the end of each blog post.

IT IS A LONG-TERM PROJECT

Blogging is about the long-run. Save for a few miracles, it will take some time for your efforts to bear fruit. You may get quick bursts or hits, but those won’t matter as much as return visitors, people who are consistently interested in your product or in what you have to say. It can be daunting to think about, as blogging requires a plenty of time and a level of creativity that you might fear you lack. Don’t worry, even the least creative people can write about something they are passionate about. It just takes them more time to do it. Do what writers do when they sit down at an empty page write. Start with a topic or theme, then an outline, add some bullets, and then expand upon each bullet with detail. You might need to put it aside for an hour or more, just to let your mind think over a few points before putting the final touches on it. The point is, make the content worthwhile and give your readers some sort of takeaway that they can use. Those are the kind of posts that will get shared. What is really helpful is if you have a content calendar put together. A good way to get started is by giving each month

a content theme, and a good way to come up with themes is by looking at your services or products. For example, if you have a 6-step program you sell, assign each step as a monthly content topic and build your conversation around that step. When you’re done, you’ll have 6 month’s worth of content.

AUTHORSHIP MARKUP

Little has been said about this powerful tool, which is surprising considering how much it changes. It puts a face, the face of the author, to the blog when it pops up in a search engine results list. Your blog is then transformed from an anonymous entity to one with an author brave enough to take responsibility for what they say. That alone might convince people to purchase your product, especially if you’re good at writing in a friendly tone.

Businesses succeed and perform well when their owners put their back into it and go the extra mile. This is one of those times when you shouldn’t hesitate. Generating leads for your business from your blog can be a daunting task. There is so much to do and so much to keep in mind. However, no business made it because they took time off. Businesses succeed and perform well when their owners put their back into it and go the extra mile. This is one of those times when you shouldn’t hesitate. It’s time to persevere and be the thought leader you were meant to be!

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14 | ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013

STRATEGY

BE THE VICTOR 8 CONDITIONING SECRETS of the FIT ENTREPRENEUR

“I

sn’t being a bully smart for business?” I was asked this question by a business owner recently when I was speaking at a conference.

My answer? Nope. Being fit is smart for business. Fit comes from a word that means “to fight” and when you fight for your authenticity; your integrity; for truth and overcome lies that lead to behaving like a bully, hero or victim…. You are the victor: authentic, smart, courageous and strong. Conditioning your CORE and then choosing authentic actions and words from this powerhouse is how you win in business and life. Online and off…. Your victory begins within™: 8 Conditioning Secrets of the Fit Entrepreneur

Receive, Receive, Receive Marketing is really about receiving. Not taking, manipulating or giving it all away: receiving. When you are on mission and making your difference in the world; receiving is fundamental. And successful. “We have been placed in a world with apparently limited resources and created with almost limitless yearnings and desires. It may seem that there is not enough for everyone. However, if [we choose] ongoing and constant co-operation, there will be more than enough for everyone.” 1 CO-operation. Working together – with one another – for a common purpose and common benefit. It requires receiving

WRITTEN BY GINNY VICTORY and giving: circulation. Condition yourself to be humble, secure and strong enough to receive ease; a thank you, a gift, an opportunity so that as you are on mission and there will be more than enough for everyone. Victory.

Honor Yourself Discover your purpose. First: ‘why’ you exist as a human being. Second: ‘why’ your entity exists in the marketplace. Keep ‘em separate for victory. Mix ‘em up and you get extortion, hoursfor-dollars or entitlement. When you know your inner light and its impact, you can keep it lit and know you are making a difference with everyone who crosses your path: just by your existence. This will also create a natural draw to you and your business. Then: you can price, package and promote your products and services in alignment with the experience/results your customers receive and in alignment with marketplace (value/ demand). Separate from your value as a human being. Let go of superior, perfect and inferior. Condition yourself to honor yourself: be humble, messy, and equal. Let your light and services shine. Know your value; be on-purpose. Impact through presence and sales = Victory.

Be Selective You do not need to strive, prove or earn your worth. Status quo is subjective and pressures decisions based on outside expectations, impossible standards, or following the ways of a guru. ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013 | 15

STRATEGY Be you. You are the plumb line by which you and your business measure up. Dig deep for what you believe in, refine the definitions of your values so they are true to you and determine their priority to align with your vision, your true heart’s desires. Condition yourself to believe; live; choose; decide with your values. What you think and with whom you cooperate in alliances, service, client, team, marriage, household is about being selective, according to your uniqueness. Fit is it. Victory.

Trust, Let go, Leap You have 7 brain lobes. They operate in an order unique to you. Figure it out and you’ll have an assurance that overcomes control, obligation, fear. Create a new product; grow a relationship; make a decision; grieve a loss/let go of a regret; develop your own character, close a deal, take a leap of faith all by using your brain lobe order and have assurance. Condition yourself to trust, let go and take aligned action that bears much power and fruit. Victory.

Get

Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fire

That’s exactly where the leap takes you: into your fire. Stay there. What if the flames of heaven are hotter than the flames of hell? Fire is light, heat, propulsion; it refines, cauterizes, restores; just to name a few…. Glowing goodness it is. And it’s in your heart. You were given the desires of your heart when you were formed in the secret place and now you get to receive them. IF you’re willing to be vulnerable: embrace every shame, addiction, mistake, failure, regret, mess; every fear; every

hope, dream, yearning, desire, vision, milestone, goal; every feeling; every obstacle; detour; challenge; person; experience. Each one is an opportunity to propel you through and forward IF you embrace it with your heart to find the key, the direction, the action ~ and then take it. Trusting that it is the next step that will lead you to the next step. An ever emerging and more aligned strategic plan. Your heart is your primary CORE muscle and is conditioned through vulnerability. No more tough heart; heart shoved into a box; or wondering/wandering heart: go braveheart this is true strength and leads to Victory.

Mind Your Own Business This is an exhortation, a release and a permission. Bullies can let go of control, heroes are released from obligation and victims are given a permission slip. Take care of you: body, mind, relationships, finances, life, business, soul. It’s all yours to mind. Create a strategic action plan aligned with how you’re wired, what you want and need. Condition yourself to fuel up in all areas of self, life and business for sustainability. Surrender to truth and reality, be free and believe that you matter at this level and so does your business. Victory.

Speak Truth Go raw. Speak the truth in love. Truth sets us free and love is power. Harshness, placating, doormat not so much. Find your authentic, quirky, edgy, unique voice and… ➤ negotiate that contract for a win-win ➤ ask for what you want ➤ give feedback with confidence and respect ➤ navigate conflict with grace and dignity

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16 | ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013

STRATEGY ➤ create intimacy ➤ foster a team Communication is key to cooperation. Truth and love = Victory.

Cooperate, Cooperate, Cooperate “Should you decide to try it on your own, you will condemn yourself to a constant struggle for survival.”1 We’ve been conditioned to believe that work ethic and character are about being competent, capable and have capacity all on your own. Hard work, I have to do it all, one size fits all is shifting sand. A solid foundation and infrastructure are based on cooperation: team, family, organizational design and function, systems, policies, procedures, traditions, roles. Condition yourself with the ease, consistency, and confidence that come from customizing, complementing and cooperating according to your CORE. Interdependence = Victory.



Be the victor: condition your courage and choose to speak and act from the unique powerhouse of your CORE for fitness in business and life. Your Victory Begins Within™ 1 (Thou Shall Prosper by Rabbi Daniel Lapin)

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VISIONARY. SUCCESS STRATEGIST. CATALYST

GINNY VICTORY

is a nationally recognized expert in leading people and organizations to their destiny. Integrating over 20 years in finance, leadership development and change management with her experience as a Pilates Instructor Ginny created the CORE Connection™; a strategic planning model that unveils your unique path to victory. She has inspired and empowered over 1000 leaders – 555 entrepreneurs – in manufacturing, construction, design, wellness, marketing/PR, IT including: Herman Miller, BDO Seidman, Amway, Bissell and Steelcase to tap into their core assets, overcome liabilities and cultivate peak performance. As the founder and CEO of Victory Begins Within, LLC Ginny is passionate about bringing people back to their truth and strength: the powerhouse of their core to unlock the desires of their heart – leading to a life and calling they love. She is a catalyst for clarity, aligned action and results. A Michigan State University graduate, Ginny is a CPA; has certifications from Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Thomas DISC and has studied at prestigious Coaches Training Institute. She loves to be active in her local communities and has held board, committee and conference chair positions with ICF-Michigan; supported the Michigan Philharmonic as docent and in the box office; and recently took inspired and aligned action to move to Silicon Valley – on the path to her destiny in calling and love. Contact her at ginny@ginnyvictory.com for a 30-minute complimentary CORE Fitness evaluation. ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013 | 17

PRODUCT LAUNCHES

PRODUCT PRE-LAUNCH

WRITTEN BY PAM IVEY them to see the potential they can achieve to start whetting the appetite for your new product by providing them a case study, eReport or a free toolkit.

nce a product or program has been created, it’s time to create the pre-launch campaign which will get your audience excited about your offering.

Create Your Pre-Launch Campaign

To get started you need to create a detailed living plan and marketing calendar that will map out for a period of approximately four weeks prior to product launch everything you need to do. Your plan will include a general map of all your launch emails, blog posts, social media content, and more.

Build a List

After all, you need people to market to! Host relevant events such as webinars, and Google Hangouts that build excitement about your product while also building your marketing list. Give away some free content, but ensure that all content or freebies are totally related to your target audience to ensure a quality list of responsive buyers.

Build Camaraderie

Create Other Marketing Collateral

Get prepared with all your marketing collateral in advance including sales pages, social media updates, webinar material, Hangout ideas, and so forth. If you’re going to create sales pages, create them now. This will give you time to tweak during the four weeks of pre-launch based on feedback.

Build Excitement

Provide free content to give potential customers a quality taste of your offering. By doing so you’ll encourage reciprocity because those who are in your target audience will appreciate the free offering and want to respond. Help

TIPS

Find ways to create a feeling of “us against them” or an “I belong” feeling in your list of potential buyers. If they feel like buying your product or service will bring them closer to the group and make them belong they’ll be that much more likely to buy. Building in exclusivity increases buying behavior by tapping into the desire to belong.

Benefits Over Features

In any content you send your list, all the way down to sales pages always place the focus on pain-points and solutions – not features – focus on your potential client’s aspirations. What do they want to achieve? Remember, it’s about them, not you. While you know what they need, you’ve got to express to them the benefits in a way that they also want what you have. Now.

It’s important during pre-launch to be prepared for the point leading up to the product launch date with everything that you need. Consider everything on the table in terms of marketing from traditional sales pages, to video sales pages. Also don’t forget about your affiliates. They should be involved in prelaunch too. Think outside the box in terms of creating the excitement that the product or program deserves. Think about how movie execs build excitement before the movie is even complete. They release products to fast-food restaurants, they release trailers, and behind the scenes information to build excitement. That’s your job during product pre-launch.

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18 | ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013

SEO

Put Away the

Black Dress,

ne of the most vital aspects of Internet marketing is being able to make your name visible to prospective clients who are in search of the products and services you offer. If no one knows you exist, they cannot give you their business. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an important part of Internet marketing and has been known as an effective means of promoting your brand for years now.

Recently, claims have been made… that SEO as a marketing tool is on its death bed due to the increased sophistication of search engines that are no longer easily manipulated by the placement of keywords that it recognizes. In the past, knowing what Google was looking for was all you needed to push a website up the search engine’s ranks. Simply adding in the keywords that you knew Google wanted would promote your website and increase the likelihood of it receiving online traffic. Updates to Google’s operation have since reduced the effectiveness of the basic premise of adding in keywords to increase the site’s search engine rankings. Many people believe that this means the death of SEO, as the manipulation aspect of this marketing practice is no longer as efficient as it once was. Although ‘gaming the system’ is certainly less plausible than it once was, SEO as a marketing tool is still vital for promoting a brand on the Internet. Simply because Google cannot be easily tricked to promote sites that may not even be the most related to a topic anymore, does not mean that they no longer promote websites based on their merits whatsoever.

is NOT Dead WRITTEN BY ELAYNE WHITFIELD | IMAGE COURTESY OF DIGITALART / FREEDIGITALPHOTOS.NET The increased sophistication of Google’s system of website promotion only means that websites need to be legitimately optimized for the search engine rather than just manipulated to appear optimized. A wide range of marketing tactics such as having a social media presence and quality, relevant content are all parts of SEO that those who are claiming it is dead, seem to be forgetting. Just because Google is not as easily manipulated anymore does not mean that SEO is heading the way of the VHS tape. Search engine optimizers are however, needing to slightly change their approach; those who partake in SEO no longer need to be technicians in the sense of being able to work the code that Google operates within. Modern SEO is rather something that requires skills of strategy and content management. As long as there are search engines, there will be a need for SEO. Google still ranks its search results with a system that assesses the quality of websites and assigns them bonuses and penalties based on various components. Knowing Google’s system of bonuses and penalties may be a skill that is different from knowing how to manipulate keywords but this is the reality of modern SEO. Being able to organize and manage a website so that its quality and relevance are recognized is an essential part of being present online and without this component your business will fall behind. Not only is SEO not dead, it is alive and well and the need for experts in the field has never been greater.

ELAYNE WHITFIELD is a recognized Virtual Assistant Trainer, Speaker and

Coach as well as the co-author of How to Build a Successful Virtual Assistant Business which is used as the textbook in Virtual Assistant college courses such as the Virtual Assistant Certificate program at Red Deer College in Alberta, Canada. Elayne Whitfield-Parr began Executive Assistance in 2000, transitioned her company to a successful multi-VA practice offering a full complement of business support services in 2002, and then incorporated Executive Assistance Business Solutions Inc. in 2006. In 2007, EA Design was formed to handle the website and graphic design component of the business. Learn more at www.elaynewhitfield.com ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013 | 19

E-MAIL MARKETING

30 EXCUSES YOU CAN USE TO CONNECT WITH YOUR LIST

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

New Facebook cover New product New blog post New guest post somewhere else You’re going to be away Something you learned at an event How you’re implementing what you’ve learned A customer success story A customer question A mistake you made (for people to learn from) A mistake someone else made (and how to correct it) A cool tool you just tried Dispelling a myth about your market A demo of one way to use your product A new contest you’re running The results of a contest A request for feedback The results of the feedback Top 5 FAQs and their answers Something you learned from a new book Freebies you’ve found (preferably from affiliates) Resources you’ve been using lately Restating your value proposition or mission Changes you’re making in your business and why Something you learned from your mentor A video you just made How to do something (step-by-step) Follow-up to something you sent before A report that combines a blog post series you wrote Curated content – a list of links to hot news

20 | ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013

ne issue that often roadblocks a business from moving forward is not understanding the difference between a strategy vs. tactics. It’s really a simple difference but one that traps many business managers. Strategy is the answer to what you’re going to do and tactics are how you’re going to do it. In order to devise a well thought out strategy it’s important to understand the difference so that you can define your strategy before you venture into the nuts and bolts of how you will implement the strategy. The reason it’s so important to differentiate between strategy and tactic is that if you don’t know the difference you may put the cart before the horse. Think of strategy as your idea, and the tactics are the way in which you’ll get there. For instance your online marketing strategy may be to become the Budget Conscious Architect. Your tactics for getting there will be the actions you take to get known as the Budget Conscious Architect. Tactics are all about execution where as strategy is all about the concept. Some people also get strategies mixed up with goals. A goal is a measurable result with an objective to be completed within a certain time. Usually a business will first develop a goal, then come up with a strategy that is used to achieve the goal with actionable tactics based on the strategy. There are common components of successful strategies.

UNDERSTAND YOUR BUSINESS STORY

What is your brand’s current status and how did it get there? What is the back story? Can you tell your story in a way that will deliver the results that you want to the audience you are

TACTICS

STRATEGY

WRITTEN BY PAM IVEY targeting? The questions, what do you do, why do you do it, how are you different and why anyone should care should be answered in your business story.

COMPLETE A SWOT ANALYSIS

It’s imperative to know your own strengths and weaknesses as well as the opportunities and threats that your competition brings to the table. Without a clear picture of your competition it’s hard to move forward toward differentiation.

AN OVERALL UNDERSTANDING OF THE MARKET

Knowing your consumer, who wants what you’re offering and why down to having the ability to create personas of each segment of your market will help you create your strategy as well as workable tactics to penetrate your market.

THE ABILITY TO SEE THE BIG PICTURE

Sometimes it’s hard to see the forest for the trees, but you need to be able to see the entire picture that you’re trying to create from each component. By being able to see the big picture you’ll be able to identify tactics that will work to put your strategy into action through to reach your goals. In order to differentiate between strategy and tactic you can write it out in a sentence. If your sentence is something to do, it’s a tactic, if has a measurable result, it’s a goal, if it’s an idea it’s a strategy. Starting with a goal, creating the strategy, and then creating tactics are the steps you take to achieve success. Know the difference. ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013 | 21

CONTENT MARKETING

CONTENT MARKETING IN

2014

or many years we have heard that content marketing is the way to our client’s hearts and budget. Are businesses leveraging content marketing as a way to attract and engage their target audience? Let’s just say, content marketing has evolved well past posting a blog article, loading it up with keywords and giving it a tweet isn’t enough and certainly doesn’t make a content management strategy designed to get results.

CREATE AN EDITORIAL CALENDAR! Start with establishing high-level monthly themes that align with your business offerings, events and milestones. Not sure how to structure this? Get out the old fashion calendar or white board and get started! Identify the “knowns” and fill in the gaps. IDENTIFY: • When significant business activities are occurring this year. New releases, launches, events, acquisitions and milestones. Add those to your calendar. • What your core competencies are, signature services, value adds. Create content to support these.

WRITTEN BY ANASTASIA VALENTINE • Customer success stories. Do you have some? Are you working on some? Showcase your wins! • Upcoming strategic announcements such as launches, revenue results, milestones. • Did your organization win an award? Showcase it in a way that adds social proof and value. Why did you win? How did your company make a difference? Why is it significant? • Guest blog opportunities for online or offline publications that reach your “perfect fit customers.” • Specials and promotions to capitalize on high profile times of the year or act as momentum builders during downtimes. Schedule all of these throughout the year. Not ready to schedule the entire year? Schedule one quarter at a time to remain flexible to include time sensitive information and late breaking news!

FEELING BOLD? THINK OUT OF THE BOX! ‘Gamify’ customer engagement and create an interactive value add (app, multimedia experience, teasers). Make the experience FUN and INTERESTING to do business with you.

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22 | ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013

CONTENT MARKETING Get your leadership involved! Have them record a video, a greeting, a call to action to support an initiative. Let the leadership connect with your community by sharing their tips, thoughts and words of wisdom. Make it a quarterly happening and make it entertaining and personal!

to market for global companies, startups and helping

SPACE FILLERS & MOMENTUM BUILDERS

small businesses make their ideas reality for over 20

Engage influencers in your space with an interview, book review or Q&A. Record it, transcribe it and repurpose the content in your blog, on your YouTube channel, on social media and to your email list. One piece of content four ways!

years. She is a passionate ideator, positive instigator,

Lists are easy to create and easy to consume. Top 5’s top 11’s, top 17’s, top 3’s…all of that works well as blog content. Recaps and reviews! Leverage other content to provide a list of great sources of information for your community. This could be a list of popular content on your site, great industry coverage, social feedback or quotes from a recent event or even a reading list that targets your perfect fit customer. You’ll notice that I didn’t mention giveaways or contests at all in a content marketing strategy. At the end of the day I’m not a fan. They tend to attract people who are keen on the freebies, may not be able to afford what you have to offer and may not be in alignment with your target customer. With that said, you can make contests viable if you make the participants work for you! Task participants to share, retweet, and reach out so that your organization can also extend its reach. Choose the winner based on the participant who has done the most work to reach the most people.

ABOUT ANASTASIA VALENTINE

ANASTASIA

has been bringing ideas

a results and facts driven business strategist and compassionate leader and visionary. Anastasia works with all sizes of organizations through her companies Sandbox and Sandbox PR to tap into their talent, invest in their culture and even look within themselves for the “next big thing.” As a sought after speaker, Anastasia delivers talks and workshops to organizations and at industry conferences worldwide designed to inspire, motivate and educate. She is also the host of the weekly @AVV Biz Talk Radio show debunking business myths with facts and sass. Learn more at www.sandboxpm.com and www.sandbox-pr.com

STILL HAVE GAPS IN YOUR EDITORIAL CALENDAR? Poll your community. These are your customers, online community and partner network. Ask THEM what they want to read, see and experience. Identify trends and add the content your community wants to the editorial calendar. Offer guest posts to your internal staff and external influencers! Ensure the content is edited, on message and aligns with the company culture and values before you hit POST!

OVERWHELMED WITH THE AMOUNT OF CONTENT? No worries – engage ghost writers who are established and can write about the subject matter you require! The content is all about your community. Who authors it is quite irrelevant as long as you are delivering value at every click to your community. As long as the writer is able to author pieces in your organizations “voice” and deliver the quality and value your community expects it’s all good! Wishing you the best and great content for 2014! ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013 | 23

CONTENT MARKETING

POPULAR CONTENT

MARKETING TRENDS That Will Continue

our audience is starving for information. They want to be informed, entertained, engaged, and even challenged by relevant content. They do not want to feel sold to. Today, consumers want you to woo them with smart and intelligent information that speaks to their needs. Not slick sales pieces that speak to their wants. Smart content builds trust, increases brand awareness and leaves the reader feeling fortified. There are many different types of content that you can use in your marketing to get your message to your audience. When creating your content marketing strategy it’s important to include some of each type of content with one caveat. Ensure first that it’s something your audience will relate to and like. Then, test it, check your metrics, and use those numbers to determine how you move forward.

Written Content Blog posts, guest blog posts, eBooks & eReports & white papers and social media posts can all be written, textual content. This type of content can be used in a variety of ways from imparting information to your audience to attracting search engine clicks to your websites. Email Messages

Newsletters, eCourses, and email marketing messages can be used for a variety of reasons such as educating your audience, moving buyers through your product funnel, and keeping them aware of your existence.

Content Curation Sometimes you don’t even have to write content, you can instead collect and share content that others have written with your added comments on it. If it’s relevant to your audience then you need to seek it out, and share it.

WRITTEN BY PAM IVEY

Online Presentations Using PowerPoint and other software to create online presentations that you can share via sites like SlideShare.com is an excellent way to use content to showcase your expertise. Podcasts

Sometimes people do not think of podcasts as content but it is. You can record yourself interviewing important movers and shakers in your niche and post that as new content to your website and share through social media.

Videos

Becoming one of the most important types of content that you can share online video can come in many forms from very short, to longer. You can share video on YouTube, Vine and other online locations including social media sites like Facebook.com.

Images Memes, pictorials and infographics are all types of content that you can use across all your various online locations. They’re wonderful ways to give your audience fast information that they can easily share and use right away. Webinars & Live Presentations Using a webinar system like GoToWebinar.com or Google + Hangouts On Air is an excellent way to generate more content for your business. The content can then be repurposed into other forms for use later. All of these types of content will continue to be popular and even supported and encouraged by the major search engines. The important factor for you to take away from this is that your content needs to be varied, relevant, and useful in order to be seen as such not only by the search engine technology as it improves, but by the humans for whom you create the content.

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24 | ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013

INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT INTERVIEW

TRACY REPCHUCK #1

DEEMED THE WOMAN SPEAKER FOR INTERNET MARKETING WRITTEN BY KATE SMITH

RACY REPCHUK is an International speaker and Motivator, Recurring Riches for Life Coach, Bestselling Author, Award-Winning Entrepreneur, coach, mentor, and consultant.

Her #1 bestseller “31 Days to Millionaire Marketing Miracles” serves as the reference guide to newbies and entrepreneurs wanting to turn their passion into profits and accelerate business results. Tracy Repchuk catapulted onto the Internet marketing scene when in her first 6 months she won New Internet Marketing Success of the Year, wrote and launched a bestseller in 58 days, and made 6 figures with no list, no contacts and no idea what she was doing.

Since then she has traveled to over 22 countries appearing on stages around the world and being deemed the #1 Woman Speaker in the World for Internet Marketing, covering specialties such as Entrepreneur Reinvention, Speaker Training, Author Training, Membership Sites and Internet Marketing. In addition to appearing in many published books, motivational movies and numerous award nominations for business, coaching and marketing, she has appeared on ABC, Fox, HGTV, 4 For Your Money, King5, CW, Forbes, Washington Post, New York Post and 40 others. Sign up for her free “Inside the Internet” newsletter at: www.TheInternetGrid.com, visit her blog www.IMTracyRepchuk.com, and 1:1 options with Tracy at www.tracyrepchuk.com/web-delivery-a-coaching/internet-web-a-social-media.html

Kate: Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us Tracy. How long have you been working in the online world?

Tracy:

I’m going to back up just one little bit because I started in the software industry in 1985 when I was 19. So I’ve been in technology my whole life. And then in 1994, when the Internet was born, I was one of the first one hundred thousand web sites up there. And I have been on the Internet really since its inception and release when it was a simple bulletin board.

Kate: So you’ve seen a lot of changes over that span of time, I’m sure.

Tracy: Holly mackerel. I think back to my grandparents and how, all of a sudden, they had electricity. When I first started in the computer industry, I was on a bubble card. And I literally filled out bubbles to create a computer software program that you would have to feed into a main frame, and then it would

come out and tell you whether it worked or not. And it took you days to test your code. And then, of course, out came the micro-computer. I remember my first computer was $22,000.00. Then it moved to what they were calling the portable computer. It was the size of a Singer sewing machine and it weighed 60 pounds. And I remember carrying this around as if it was portable. It was just brutal. I’ve been in the dot com boom. I’ve been in the dot com bust. Every change there was on line. I’ve seen the inception of things like Google, when Google was born. And then I saw when social media, when My Space came out. And then of course when Facebook dominated the world and changed it, all the way until now. There are over 60 social media platforms and the news is coming from Twitter. It’s incredible, the changes, literally, that I’ve watched as an evolution. And as progression, really. It’s an incredible journey. ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013 | 25

INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT Kate:

That’s amazing because you’re probably one of the very few people in the world that have that kind of experience, that kind of history with working online. And of course, I think, one of the few women, right?

Tracy: Exactly. I mean when I started in the software industry, there were no women to be found. Literally, when I was a software programmer and I was working on main frames, doing like Cobol and Fortran, there were no women to be found. And it’s funny. When I got into Internet marketing, women were still sparse. And I was one of the few women on the stages, which was part of what I was attempting to do, was to pull women into the industry. I’ve been in four industries now where women were not really seen. The first industry I came into, of course, was software and women weren’t found. Then I became a Certified Management Accountant, and women were not on the board of governors until I got there, one of the youngest in the province, actually for Certified Management Accountant on the national board. And then I moved into Internet. And again, it was a very sparse thing because there were no women speakers. I was one of 12 women speakers travelling around the world for five years until other women started to join in. But yeah, it was amazing.

Kate: Okay. Can you tell us a little bit about your business and what type of problems your business solves for your customers?

Tracy:

Sure. I think the biggest problem that I solve is I take technology off the hands of somebody. And what I mean by that is most people struggle with how to put their website structures together. And they either go to a website designer, and those guys are great for design. But the biggest issues I have is a combination of knowing what a website should look like, both structure-wise, knowing what a brand should be and knowing what the marketing element on that should be so that the website actually works.

So what I do for my clients is I get them ready to shine online and make an instant online impact with a fully branded, complete end-to-end website presence and message-tomarket system in under 60 days. That’s what I deliver, in a very encapsulated form. So I create everything from ground zero, which means identification of the target market to who they should be targeting, to what they should be selling, to the logos, the colours, the look, the layout, the landing pages. A full website. Social media. What they should be doing. Where they should be spending there time. And the message that should go from end to end. That’s really what I deliver. And, of course, there are all sorts of ways that I can deliver that. Everything from you can buy my best selling book from Wiley to you can have me do a full turnkey system. 26 | ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013

Kate: That sounds pretty exciting because these days, just about everybody, including children, are online. And it’s such a big part of our world. And it’s so different from the old ‘go to a networking meeting and throw your business cards around’. This whole idea of marketing on line continues to unfold as technology changes and how branding and promoting businesses on line change. Tracy: It’s been revolutionary. And at the same time, it has been debilitating for businesses that did not adopt this. I remember about four years ago, when the Yellow Pages literally died and ValPacks and direct mail were no longer converting. And anybody that had not moved their business online was pretty well going bankrupt and getting beaten by younger companies that had a very good, solid online presence. And, of course, dominated the Internet, which is where everyone was searching and is searching. So industries were plummeting. The carpet cleaning industry. The dry cleaning industry. Any industry that had a long-term, older generation running it, started to really get affected. So they didn’t move to online marketing and now they’re struggling to play catch up. The issue between now and four years ago is it’s moving at the speed of light now. If we thought technology was fast before, it is nothing compared to the speed that you have to keep up with it now. So businesses constantly are now in the position where they don’t have time to learn it anymore. They need to offload the whole thing so they can focus on selling and grabbing market share, and let somebody like myself focus on the technology end of it because historically, companies were building their own websites and trying to do it themselves. And it was okay way back when. But now, there is way too much to keep up with. There is too much technology involved, the SEO (search engine optimization) and key wording of everything and the long tail, all of the elements that they simply don’t have time to keep up with.

Kate: I would assume that obviously since you have your finger on the pulse, that you’re an added advantage to those companies because they also don’t have to spend the time to stay on top of marketing trends. Tracy: That’s exactly it. And one of the biggest things they don’t have to stay on top of, I think, is knowing which trends to jump on. Because, for example, when a lot of the trends unfold, some apply to different companies and some don’t, especially when it comes to the social media. If people are in a professional arena, they really need to be investing their time in LinkedIn and building communities on Facebook and driving traffic through Twitter. And then, of course, Pinterest. A lot of people are asking, “Do we need to jump on that?” And they don’t need to know if they do. In fact, these are the type of things I can answer quickly for them. If you’re in a visual marketplace, then Pinterest is a great place. If you’re

INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT appealing to women, in particular, it’s a good marketplace. Clothing, designs, jewellery and things like that. It all depends on your industry where you should be jumping.

And then this really muddied the waters because everybody said, “Oh yeah, I’m mobile ready.” And they are still saying that today. Well, when you pull up their website though, they’re not. You can see their website on a mobile phone but if it’s not a mobile-ready website, it’s a whole different website that gets built. And it’s got a completely different structure that deals with the speed, the navigation, the font size and the ability for somebody to call, to call and connect to a company quickly. So even now, we’re going through a very messy period with what is mobile-ready and what is a true mobile website.

It’s so funny. I just listened to a webinar I did years ago when Google+ came out. And I was one of the Beta testers in the Google+ entity, so I was educating my clients on what they needed to do as far as Google+ is concerned. It was funny that my predictions back then were as accurate as they are now four years later and it’s still going that way. I just found that very interesting that I actually saw and was able to not only ascertain what was a trend, what needed to be jumped on, but how you would need to unfold your business it in and when.

Kate: Amazing. So how did you come up with the idea to build this particular business of yours?

Kate: That’s sounds like gold to a business. They can come

Tracy:

to you and just leave everything in your hands. Just tell us what to do.

Tracy:

Exactly. What is a very big differentiator? What’s happening is they’re leaving their marketing and their Internet in the hands of a graphic designer. And it’s very unclear. Or somebody like a webmaster. A webmaster will do what you tell them and only have as much marketing knowledge as you can pass on to them. Or can only fulfill the content that you have provided for them. Whereas somebody who has the marketing background knows how to develop websites and leverage all of the materials you need internally. I kind of talk about it as a website with marketing in mind versus it either being just incredibly pretty or really flashy or cutesy or whatever. And then, of course, we experienced another change, I guess about two and a half years ago. That would have been 2010, when Google decided that mobile, of course mobile phones started to massively surpass the Internet at a search rate. There are almost two billion users on the Internet and 5.5 billion mobile phone users, so they decided in 2010 that they were going to now be increasing the SEO ability of a company that has adopted a true mobile-ready website.

When I started in 1994, I already had a software company that needed a website. So immediately when HTML came out, I became what I still call a raw HTML coder. There wasn’t Wordpress. There weren’t tools. There wasn’t an ability to have a GUI (Graphical User Interface) to help you create a website. So I was a raw coder, and I created almost as if I was in a developer’s language website. And our website back then, which was Bravo Software Group, it was hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages because we had software that was selling around the world and a massive education cycle because we were involved at that time, in electronic data interchange, which is still incredibly popular today. We created one of the first FAX software technologies, and we were developing software for banks, lottery corporations and governments and Fortune 100 companies. And so I was in essence, at the same time, teaching them that they needed to be online and they needed to have this website presence like at the time Bravo Software did. And after that, companies started to come to me to develop their websites. And then, of course, within that realm, I started to learn heavily about the value of being search engine optimized and things of that

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ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013 | 27

INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT nature. And the value of a blog when it first came out. And the fact that we could tap into Google instantly. And so again, a combination of me being at the forefront of the trends, already being a website developer. Then, of course, fast-forward years later and in comes Wordpress. When Wordpress came in, I actually backed off of website development. I said, “Oh, everyone’s got this quick little tool. They can do it themselves. They’re fine.” And so for four years, I didn’t do any website development for other companies. I only did it for myself. And I moved into training of Internet marketing and how to find your keywords and how to create a membership site and how to do a sales page and how to do copywriting. And so I became more of an educator. And what I found at the end of those four years, is with all the education in place and the correct education, quite frankly, they still weren’t developing a website that was correct. And it was driving me crazy. So two years ago, I slipped back into the website development realm. I started taking over all the projects again and I said, “This magical tool is great only if you have the knowledge of what should be where and what it should look like. What your target market is. What your keywords are.” And they just simply didn’t. So I jumped back into the field. It was a very interesting journey and for me to see

that even with a tool that I thought could possibly replace me didn’t even come close.

Kate: As one of the big players in the online marketing arena, what was one thing that you’ve learned, maybe one of those big ah-ha moments, that set you on the right path in your business?

Tracy:

Throughout my journey, there were a lot of ahha moments that were very interesting. The first one was the discovery of Internet marketing for me because I was in software and was developing websites. So ah-ha number one was holy mackerel. You can use this to market a message in a very big way as opposed to, at that time, I was developing websites simply in a brochure-like manner, to compliment offline validity. You know, you did a postcard. You did a Yellow Page ad. You had somewhere to send them. Now the cycle is complete. They believed you were a real business. Then when, of course, the evolution of and the decline of direct marketing approaches in the offline world, that’s when I discovered Internet marketing. It was like holy mackerel. We can penetrate the world with our message in a very precise manner. So that was ah-ha number one. That’s when I left the software industry and moved into Internet marketing exclusively in 2006.

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IMAGE COURTESY OF ADIDODEV.COM 28 | ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013

INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT Ah-ha number two was when I got into Internet marketing, the concept of masterminds and mentors. Because I came from the software industry, and perhaps because of that...I don’t know how other people are...there wasn’t this ability to tap into somebody who has done it before you and you could get this accelerated pace from it which was the mentor end of it. And then there was this other concept that I discovered which was the mastermind, which means you can get all the peers together and they share ideas. In the software industry, it was so secretive. You talked about nothing until you were weeks past the launch, practically. Well, here, everyone is telling everyone what they’re up to and everyone is good with that. And so that was a very huge shift in almost the opening of kind of a communication cycle and the ability to move everybody at a faster pace towards success. So that was very cool when I saw all of this sharing of technology in a way that all of us could prosper from it. The next kind of ah-ha moment was when I became a speaker. And I’ll never forget. When I was at my first World Internet Summit event, and I’m watching, and at the end of the four days, of course, they were all men. There were 12 men on that stage, and that’s where I set this thing in motion for myself where I said, “Wow. In all the world, there isn’t one woman who is capable of being on that stage? This is ridiculous!”

just a few of my early stages. Now, my ah-ha moments are just mind-blowing.

Kate: I can just imagine! In a marketing industry with so many players, how do you ensure that you continuously stand out from the crowd? Tracy:

Last year was an absolute perfect example of how does one stand out from the crowd? And it’s the reason that I am doing the mastermind that I am this year, my Message to Millions Mastermind because I reached 20 million people last year and I did it in a very structured way by design. Here is what I teach my clients. These are some of the fundamental ways you have to get in place before you can even start to move into an industry, especially one as competitive as Internet marketing. You have to know your target market. If you don’t know your target market, you have no idea how to speak to them, the colours that they want, what they expect and what they need. And then if you don’t know your target market, you don’t know the words that they’re using in order to leverage Google and all of the communities and words that they’re involved with so that you can actually reach your target market. And then, of course, in order to penetrate, you have to know what is called your Unique Selling Proposition. If you don’t know what makes you you and why you are different from your competition, they’ll have no idea why they should select you. And historically, we could do this in front of somebody. And you would have to try to explain what makes you you. You would be in a business meeting and they would buy you.

So I said to myself, “In one year, I’m going to be on that stage. I’m going to be a speaker.” And that wasn’t on my radar prior to that moment but it bothered me so much that women weren’t a part of a movement that was this big. So that was another ah-ha moment. And the beautiful part about that is not only was I on the World Internet Summit stage in six months, not a year, but they paid me to be there because I had won “New Internet Marketing Success of The Year” award, and they flew me, all expenses paid, from California to Singapore to appear on my very first stage in front of 3,400 people. That launched me instantly as a speaker and I started to speak internationally for the next five years after that on all of the major stages that were out there.

On the Internet, you have three seconds. If you can’t differentiate yourself in three seconds, they’re gone. And so those are some of the fundamentals. Now what I did this year was on a completely different operating level and the execution for very specific strategies to reach the level that I did. The first, of course, was dominating the Internet. And, of course, that was all the strategies I teach when it comes to just what I discussed right there; target, reach, SEO, Unique Selling Proposition and effective marketing online.

Again, this ah-ha lead to an absolute breakthrough in an industry. And I could probably go through ah-ha’s for an hour. This is the type of industry that 1) it has such an incredible pace but 2) has so many breakthroughs that it’s captivating in a way that you’re constantly growing and you’re constantly evolving to a higher state of operation at all times. So those are

The second element was a book. And, of course, this year, I was picked up by Wiley publishing, which is one of my dreams, and a top New York literary agent. And so 31 Days to Millionaire Marketing Miracles launched simultaneously around the world and I went international best selling author all in the same week around the world. That was a whole new plateau. ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013 | 29

INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT The third thing that I did this year, of course, is continue with my speaking and reaching very specific target audiences around the world once again. And last but not least, I added TV and media. I became the go-to person for technology and social media in the U.S. and Canada. And this year, I’ve done over 22 appearances in the last few months alone. And so that had me reach absolute new heights. And when you combine those things that I did this year and what I’m going to be teaching this year, specifically, that allows you to almost hit a celebrity status. And when that happened, of course, my rates went up, my credibility, my authority, my perception in the industry rose as well. And when that occurs, of course, it’s much easier to pop to the top of the marketplace when you put together a strategy like that.

Kate: I guess that leads into when you’ve been featured in so many high-profile media outlets that you’re getting a lot of amazing exposure. But are they coming to you or are you...I don’t want you to give away any secrets obviously, but you must have, or was it a two-way street? You marketed to them because of your speaking and everything else you’re doing or they’re coming to you because they’re finding out about you because of the type of marketing you do, they’re just naturally finding you?

Tracy: It was two-pronged. The first thing I did was chase them. And I had a very specific strategy where I was smiling and dialing and I was sending them my material, sending them segment proposals and my credibility. And, of course, then when I was picked up by Wiley Publishing, which of course, I moved from self-publisher to one of the top publishers in the world for business books, that raised my credibility and that started to get me faster. Then as I got more TV media appearances under my belt, more TV saw that and then they started to contact me. And then the people that I’d appeared with already started to use me as a resource. So if something happened, they’d say, “Can you come down tomorrow and do a story on this?” And so it became a very specific marketing strategy. And now it gained the momentum and leverage that you want to have occur in that they are now contacting me.

Kate: That is super awesome. It just makes me think. Do you have any time to yourself in such a busy business? Tracy: I am definitely busy. And at the same time, the line between work and play and family and home, there isn’t one. My husband and I have worked from the home for the last 20 years and raised our kids from the home. They were Internetschooled and travelled around the world with us as I did my speaking engagements. We had every vacation, every fun time, months in Australia, Dubai, no matter where we’ve been, it has been this incredible fun time. And then when I have to work; when I have to appear on the stage, when I have to get a 30 | ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013

book out the door, when I have to deliver for clients, all of that, I’m incredible focused. And that is one of the basic strategies that I constantly apply. I know what my big vision, mission, purpose, impact, message and my why and legacy are. And because I know all of those pieces, I know exactly what I’m doing all the time to move myself toward those. I know what opportunities to take. I know what opportunities to leave. And I think that that is one of the biggest things in the industry is people are constantly distracted by bright, shiny objects and they’re running towards those. And the reason you run toward those is you’re not clear on what your own purpose is and again, that’s part of the mastermind issue too, is getting really clear, to remove all of the distractions. When you move all distractions, it’s incredible how much time you have. And so I cover 20 hours of spiritual development alone and that’s as much time as some people even work on their business. I have tons of time to me, my family, our play time, my work, my own spiritual development and everything else that I do because I am very structured, systemized and focused.

Kate: That makes so much sense. Turning toward the focus of the magazine and the Online Marketing Manager Certification Program that Pam is developing. What roles or activities do you delegate to your team and what MUST you handle yourself? Tracy: I’ve heard people get it to the point where there is practically very little that they handle. And they’ve got it to the point of being the supervisor and then they show up maybe once a month. I probably could get to that level, but I’m not there. Currently, I feel I still need to constantly handle things, even though I do know I’m sure somewhere along the lines, somebody could be as good as me on my team, but we’re not there yet. So what I feel I need to constantly handle is the communications between me and the client, the development of their whole online strategy; develop that from end-to-end, including the colours, the keywords, the logo, the marketing, all of these pieces. And then even though I outsource, and I’ve had a team in place for years, all of the website development and that type of work, logo development, all of the pieces, I’m still the one to oversee all of it and to communicate with the client so that it is streamlined and effortless for the client as much as possible. And yet, it’s easy also for my development team because I communicate to them in the exact way they need to know, simply because I’ve done it. I’m a programmer and I’m a website developer who is telling them exactly where stuff should go. Things aren’t left to chance, so it’s not the blind leading the bind. So I still hold on to all of that. I still do all my social media communications. I don’t know if that is something I can let go of one day and maybe I can but right now, I see that as my touch point to my potential clients and my current clients. And so I don’t see how I can. I know a

INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT lot of people do. They have this whole thing outsourced, but for me, that’s my reach point. It’s an outreach point that I haven’t been able to let go of yet. I still handle my own email between myself and clients, and I still, of course, do the calls between me and clients. And some of the stuff that I outsource now is a lot of the front-end stuff, so it’s actually difficult to get to me. And that has to be by design because unless you’re paying me right now, it’s very costly for me to use up my time. So I can’t be there for general questions, for people who are seeking me out. I only get on the phone with somebody when they’ve paid the money to have me on a call. Prior to that, it’s sourced with my internal staff. You’re getting questions answered that way. Unless you’re ready to make the leap, you don’t get me on the phone. You don’t get me to evaluate your site and things of that nature. And so I’ve had to become very precise on who can reach me and who can ask me questions and where I spend my time. I only spend the majority of my time with people that, at a VIP level, have invested in me. I think most people have to end up going that way or else you’ll be in a position where you have no time.

Kate: Exactly. You’d be too stretched. Tracy: I know one of the hot things going

So I think you have to have incredible research skills. You would have to be extremely organized because you are managing a lot of moving pieces when it come to online management, whether you’re taking on social media, whether you’re taking on their blog, whether you’re taking on their website, whether you’re getting the word out through PR and other resources. There are a thousand moving parts as an online manager, and you have to be focused, diligent and knowledgeable and have amazing research skills.

Kate:

That makes me wonder when there are so many moving pieces in different areas of the business, not that the manager actually has to execute all of the tasks but has to have knowledge like you say. Are there any particular metrics that you suggest are used? I know there is Google Analytics but I guess it would depend on what kind of marketing medium you’re using to understand the kind of exposure; how you’re building exposure. How can you gauge that?

Tracy: And that’s the beauty of the Internet as opposed to old-style marketing we used to have. You could never gauge the impact that Yellow Pages had on you. You can gauge everything online. And if I was hiring an Online Marketing Manager, there would definitely be metrics involved.

on right now is strategy calls. Well, I can’t do a strategy call with somebody because there simply aren’t enough hours in the day for me to do that. If you want a strategy call, call our office. It’s not going to come to me. If you want me, it’s $1,000. And it’s well worth it. You will get the greatest answers you’ve ever had in your life for one hour of my time, and it will be everything you need to do over the next year in one hour. That’s the value proposition.

The first would, of course, be Google Analytics onto my page, the second is my alexa ranking increasing? The third is where am I for all 10 keywords that we would pick for any campaign and any website? We’d start with 10 keywords. Where am I today on those? Where am I next month? Where am I month after month after month? If it’s not increasing to the point where I’m not getting higher and higher ranking, that’s an indication that something’s not working. That would be a metric.

Kate: What do you feel are essential knowledge and skills for

From a social media perspective, I would be measuring two things; the increase in my Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, just from a people perspective because you know, you can easily

a truly valuable Online Marketing Manager to possess?

Tracy: It’s two-fold. A manager can’t just manage the moving parts. They have to understand the company intimately or at least the marketplace intimately because they have to know, they have to go back to where are you going to get these targets from that you know they need to be addressing? Where are you going to get those special LinkedIn people? The platforms. The Twitter feeds, the communities that a particular company needs to be involved with, and if you’re going to communicate on their behalf, representing the company, in their voice to that target audience.

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So it’s certainly a hard task, and I think somebody who possesses the skills and ability to properly do an online management for somebody would probably possess the skills that I currently do because you know that maybe I don’t know real estate but I sure as heck know how to research real estate and your exact target market and communicate in the language they expect because I would research it. ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013 | 31

INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT increase people but from a Klout pure index perspective, I’d want to see that going and improving, because that means more people are retweeting. They’re engaging. They’re talking to me. They’re talking about me. So I’d use Klout for sure for the pure index. And on top of that, how many came into my funnel? For example, in Infusionsoft, I can track who came from Facebook, who came from Twitter, who came from very single angle, right? Where did they come from? And so I would be measuring those metrics against what a company would do for me. So if, for example, I’m paying for a Facebook campaign and I have three people that have come in the last month from Facebook into my funnel, into my landing page metric and there was a sale, something happened, those are the metrics I’d be using. Now it’s not their job to make me more money. Once somebody comes into my funnel, it’s my job to make the money. So the only thing I would be tracking is what’s happening, who’s talking about me and they need a metric that starts at the funnel.

Kate: Okay, so do you have a favourite tool or system that you use?

Tracy: Depends. For what? Kate: Generally speaking to market your own business. Tracy: Well definitely, my favourite tool is the autoresponder, regardless of the one you use. I use Infusionsoft. That’s your lifeblood of a business in today’s online marketing as far as being able to generate money instantly. The other tools I use would be something like Hootsuite. Even though I do my own communication, it is a tool that allows me to queue whatever, 60 tweets for the week. And then I can just focus my time on communicating any replies to those tweets. And then I can focus my time on communicating on Facebook and LinkedIn. So Hootsuite is another tool that I heavily use.

few years, list building and autoresponders are going to be a mainstay I would think.

Tracy: I would definitely say the autoresponder is definitely a mainstay. Even though people are saying that email readability is going down and so is the open rate, I still think it’s going to be here for quite a long time because there is nothing that can replace it. We’re trying to replace it with texting but the funnel will get overloaded and when you send a text, it can’t be detailed enough, this quick little thing that sends them to a link. We’re constantly pushing people all over the Internet and it will eventually cause a dysfunction in it. Email is still the thing that allows us to communicate effectively. And to make money well, there is nothing on the landscape that is going to be able to replace that. I use Go To Webinar every week, so it is a tool for me to be able to reach people on mass in a live communication scenario, so that’s something that’s very cool. But I don’t think autoresponders are going away any time soon. And if they are, my clients would know about it.

Kate:

So what was one of your biggest challenges as an online entrepreneur and how did you overcome it?

Tracy:

The biggest challenge in the beginning was again, popping from a place of nowhere. I came on as an Internet marketer and the Grand Masters were there. There were 12 of them, pretty much the Godfathers of Internet marketing, and I had to pop up on a big enough scale that I got on their radar. So that was challenge number one. How did I do that? Massive speed. I think that’s one of the things people neglect. I invested probably $100,000 in my first six months of being online. And I went all in. And everything I learned, I applied. And then I got my next mentor and learned and applied and got my next mentor. I think leveraging people above you is one of the key

The other use I use heavily is the internal contact management system within Infusionsoft. And that’s where you keep your clients and things of that nature; all the details of them, and of the prospects that are coming in the door. That gives you the ability to see and track the value per head. You know what I mean? And allows you to see the volume you have in kind of where your conversions are. Do you have 1,000 people in there and it’s worth $1,000 a head or is it worth $1 a head? So those types of things I track. I still do raw SEO. I don’t have a tool that does it for me. And maybe there is a great tool out there but I’m still using Google. He’s the Grand Master. And using him to tell me what my keywords should be. Those are probably the Grand Masters of where I use a tool to leverage my time.

Kate:

So just going back to the autoresponder, I would assume no matter where Internet marketing goes over the next

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INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT success strategies to moving yourself forward at the rate you need to because money loves speed. And if you don’t get that level of momentum, you’re not going to get on somebody else’s radar. They look for results. And so that’s kind of one of the biggest hurdles was doing that. Of course, it took investment of time and money like crazy. In the beginning in my first five months, I lived, ate and breathed Internet marketing around the clock. There wasn’t this place where I am now, the more leisured pace. In the beginning, I liken it to being in a rocket ship. You need that immense propulsion to get out of the atmosphere and then once you’re out, you can orbit effortlessly around the world. But if you do not take that propulsion, you’re going to find yourself hitting a lot of peaks and valleys. When it comes to Internet marketing, technology moves as fast for us as it does for you guys. And we not only have to learn it, apply it and test it, then turn around and teach it. So I’m learning something every single day still of my life in mass amounts, in mass quantities. Then you’ll have the growing pains that every business does. In my case, I started with AWeber and needed to move to Infusionsoft. Well that was a massive big leap in technology. And it’s a very big learning curve. And so you’re back to this new evolution and level of your business which moves up from an operational and structure standpoint and getting systems in place but at the same time, of course, your efforts are now on the technology part. You’ll at least go through the same thing as any other company per se has, only you’re experiencing it at a different level and a different volume. There are tons of challenges. And I probably have challenges every week of my business life simply because of the pace that it moves. But how I keep going through is knowing that my mission, my purpose, my vision, my why, all of those elements are bigger than any barrier that could get thrown at me. And so I go over it, up it, through it, around it and I don’t listen to my own mind chatter and I don’t listen to what other people are saying about whether I can do this or not. So it really becomes getting out of your own way, which I have to do all of the time and just knowing that when you achieve what you’re looking to achieve, and make the impact that you’re looking to make in the world and get your message out. It’s worth all of the effort and time to continue to persist and pursue.

Kate:

That is just amazing. I’m totally blown away by everything we’ve been talking about. You’re very inspirational, that’s for sure. Can you give us one technique or strategy that you find invaluable in making your business work better?

out. And so it’s my job to connect with that person and make sure that they achieve their success so that it actually helps all of us. You know, part of my mission is to have people so well represented online, that their message gets out and they become part of the messengers that are going to help make this world a better place. Most of the people I deal with, and almost every client I will accept, has to have some sort of positive impact that they’re going to make in the world, whether they’re a healer, whether they’re a business person that’s helping the economy, whatever it is, if they have something that needs to get out into the world, I want to be part of that. And I remember that I’m dealing with one person at a time who has a purpose and needs somebody to help them achieve it.

Kate: Excellent. Just two more questions. Do you have any upcoming speaking gigs?

Tracy: As far as speaking gigs and TV appearances, there’s an event tab on my site as well as always on the index. You can check it out at www.tracyrepchuk.com/speaking/events.html Kate: How can people find you online? Tracy: You can find me everywhere. www.TracyRepchuk.com is my master site. The place I’d love people to go is www.MarketingSolutionsForBusiness.com. That is obviously the start of my funnel. That’s my page where people go: www.MarketingSolutionsForBusiness.com. And then between those two sites, you’ll get connected with me in every way possible to find out more about me, my programs, what I offer. I have a business site which is www.Innersurf.com. I’m the front person of the business and I’m kind of the brand. Behind me is this whole company called Innersurf, and that has its own site. People are often surprised I have this engine that I have behind me for 28 years because I’ve been in the industry since 1985.

Kate: On behalf of Pam Ivey and myself, we really appreciate you taking so much time with us today to do this interview. It’s going to be absolutely phenomenal for the magazine, I’m sure! You’ve really imparted so much wisdom, experience and advice.

Tracy: I’m excited. When I saw Pam come out with this, I was over the moon that a woman had created an Internet marketing online magazine and was going for it. When I was in Canada, I ran a magazine. I know how hard it is. So, kudos for her stepping into that role! I’m honoured to be a part of it.

Tracy: I think for me, and possibly many others as well, is remembering at the end of a website, at the end of everything that I do, is a person who has a message that needs to get

Follow OMM Magazine on Facebook: www.facebook.com/onlinemarketingmanagermagazine ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013 | 33

CONTENT MARKETING

CONTENT

MANAGEMENT

CONTENT

MARKETING

onsumers rely on online content to make most of their purchasing decisions today. With the advent of mobile technology and social media, content is more important than ever when it comes to making purchasing choices. This makes the job of managing and marketing content more important than ever for smart business owners. But sometimes it's hard to see the big picture. While content management and content marketing are intertwined they really are two separate functions that work together to create and implement a business' overall marketing strategy. By keeping the definitions in mind, your business will have a better chance of reaching online content creation and marketing objectives. A Content Manager typically oversees a group of individuals in creating content, editing content, and publishing content. While Content Marketing consists of idea development as well as distributing the content created to the appropriate audience with a specific goal in mind such as driving consumer actions, expanding brand awareness, or driving traffic to a website or store front. Usually the two go hand-in-hand. After all, you have to have the idea, then create content before you can market the content. Content Management as well as Content Marketing may also include performing website updates, blog content updates, and other administrative functions. But for the most part content marketing will focus on the best places to put the content that has been created, as well as helping to maintain the right tone throughout the entire content cycle. Marketing and management work side by side ensuring that the goals are met. 34 | ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013

WRITTEN BY PAM IVEY Content marketing management positions are popping up all over the web. These positions will fulfill both roles above. A content marketing manager will perform all the content management and content marketing oversight needed to implement an overall content marketing strategy. A content marketing manager might oversee the creation of many different types of content, repurpose content that already exists, and curate interesting content that others have created but is relevant to the audience in question. Since content is the most important and valuable marketing collateral that you have it makes sense to hire a content marketing manager to give your content the attention it deserves since itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the main component of marketing that gets results today. Look for a content marketing manager who can write, edit, manage projects, oversee others, and who has online marketing experience. The candidate should also have an understanding of SEO. If the candidate has experience using the tools that you've chosen to use to run your business such as a content management system, social media accounts, apps and more so much the better. The content marketing manager who also understands your particular niche should be someone who is tops on your list. Understanding how content management and content marketing work together will help you better manage your own content strategy if you choose to do it yourself. But, if you choose to outsource, a professional who is well versed in all the functions of both a content manager and a content marketer will make an excellent content marketing manager.

CONTENT MARKETING

CREATE AN EDITORIAL CALENDAR for

Content Marketing Success

WRITTEN BY PAM IVEY | IMAGE COURTESY OF STUART MILES

eing successful doesn’t just happen. It requires an enormous amount of planning, strategy, and action. To be successful with content marketing you have to know in advance what you’re going to do, why you’re doing it, how you’re going to do it, where you’re going to do it, and when you’re going to do it. This is where an editorial calendar comes in. An editorial calendar will revolutionize your content marketing, positioning you for success.

Your editorial calendar will also help you set realistic goals about how often you will publish content as well as determine deadlines for the content. Providing fresh content on a regular basis is imperative to your overall marketing success, but it’s also important to be realistic about your resources in terms of both time and money. It is recommended that you post a blog post at least two to three times a week to keep your website and / or blog at the top of the search engine results.

To create an editorial calendar you need to look ahead to the products and services you wish to support, as well as your list of keywords that should already be developed. Around the products and services that you'll be marketing you also want to include standard keyword-rich content focused on the topics related to your niche such as guest posts, roundups of interesting blog posts and news in your industry, and infographics.

Social media should be something that happens every single day from three to 12 times per day depending on the type of social media. For instance, you will post less on LinkedIn.com, and more on Twitter.com. These interactions will include not only posting your own content but your interaction with others on the social media. All of this needs to be planned out so that you ensure that you block out the time to do it, and all should be included in your content calendar. ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013 | 35

CONTENT MARKETING Include all the types of content you plan to distribute into your calendar such as:

Everyone on your team should have easy access to the content

• • • • • • •

times. Remember, just because a calendar is created doesn't

Blog Posts Infographics Guest Posts Round Ups Social Media Content Article Marketing Social Interaction

You can create a content calendar inside Google Docs by creating it in an excel spreadsheet or a Word Document then uploading it to Google Drive to share with others on your team. Alternatively, if you use a project management system like Basecamp or TeamworkPM you can share it there.

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36 | ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013

calendar which should be kept accurate and updated at all mean it can't be tweaked and corrected as necessary. The deadlines on the calendar should be sacrosanct and whoever is in charge of the publishing calendar should also be in charge of ensuring everyone sticks to their deadlines. By creating and maintaining an editorial calendar for your content marketing you will ensure that you have regular content to be published across all your blogs, social media and more. Creating a content calendar will also help you develop a strategy and establish goals while developing a way to make those goals become reality.

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STRATEGY

tips to INCREASE Productivity & Profits FAST

WRITTEN BY MELANIE BENSON STRICK | IMAGE COURTESY OF DANILO RIZZUTI

hat if you could get ten times more done, work 50% less and continue to triple your revenues in the process? Who wouldn’t want that, right? Well what if you made just a couple of changes in how you get things done that will position to you to outperform your best year ever? Even better right? I’ve put together a list of my top 10 “Go-To” tips for boosting my personal productivity and bottom line while minimizing the overwhelm that can surface as you grow.

01 Stop Doing Low-Payoff Activities (LPA) Low payoff activities drain your time and energy away from the bigger opportunities that only you can take action on. When we spend time “in the weeds” of our business it’s easy to lose track of your big vision. LPA are any task that someone else could do better, faster or cheaper than you can do it. When you are ready to increase profits and productivity you have to spend more time doing what has the highest payoff to the business.

02 Focus on Your Sweet Spot. Just as important as putting more time into high payoff activities is knowing what your sweet spot is – who your ideal client is, what program is your optimal seller, and the most effective way you sell that program to that ideal client. Once you know your sweet spot, it’s a 100 times easier to ramp up sales. Plus, you’ll experience “effortless flow” as you invest more time and energy on the most magnetic part of your business.

03 Time Block Your Week. A little trick I learned many years ago is to time block my day. Every day of the week has a purpose and within each day I block out time to focus on specific activities. By creating time blocks your productivity goes up about 10 times as you will experience momentum by moving from one similar project to the next. When you try to tackle different types of activities or start/stop projects, your productivity will plummet as your brain takes time to adjust to the new focus point. I always leave space on Monday morning and Friday afternoon to do what feels right – catch up or take time off to recharge. ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013 | 37

STRATEGY 04 Manage Interruptions. If you are interrupted by clients or team members all day long you’ll accomplish very little of your own goals. Create a boundary around your day so that you have at least two “focus” times. Turn off your phone, email and instant chat tools. Set a timer if you have a hard time sticking with it. Train your team or your clients what times you will be available for them so their expectations match your availability. Bonus is that many of the people who routinely interrupt you will learn to problem solve on their own!

05 Hand Off Email. Email is probably one of the biggest productivity drains on the planet. If you haven’t already, handoff your main email accounts to a personal assistant. Create templates or scripts of how you would like certain responses to be handled. Then, schedule 2 – 3 times a day (instead of every time you get a new “ding” in your inbox) that you will check your email.

06 Automate Routine Activities. There are many activities that can be automated so that you minimizing the time you spend recreating the wheel. Evaluate all of the activities that happen at a certain time or could follow a specific sequence. Document your steps or implement technology to automate the steps for you. For instance, you could use a Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) to set up automatic follow up steps or create a procedure for your weekly e-zine to be done on specific days (this is where Time Blocking comes in handy.)

07 Plan your Priorities. Planning seems to one of the least favorite activities for every entrepreneur I have worked with over the years – but the absence of a plan is the most costly. When you map out your

revenues goals and reverse engineer your offerings to meet your goals, you’ll have better focus and use of your resources. With that level of clarity you can ensure that your marketing each month is tailored to the specific offerings you’ve planned out. With this strategy, you’ll be less reactive and more profitable!

08 Give Your Offerings a Profit Boost. When you’ve done everything else right but your revenues seem stagnate, it might be time to redesign your offerings so you can scale back your one-on-one time but grow your income and impact. Consider ways to increase your fees, add volume sales, introduce group trainings or even package your knowledge into products that your clients can purchase.

09 Activate Alliances. One of the best ways to increase your productivity is to align with a colleague who serves your audience and deliver one of your “sweet spot” programs. A solid alliance already has built trust and rapport with their community and has built a marketing machine to serve them. By joining forces you eliminate the time and cost of building up that new marketing channel on your own. Of course you’ll want to share a referral fee to say Thank You – and it will be worth every penny.

10 Increase your Bandwidth. When you want to increase productivity and profits, you’ll need to increase your time to get more done. My success strategy to replicate myself quickly is to hire people who can take tasks off my plate. If your goal is to free up time for bigger projects, hire people who can take administrative tasks or customer support type activities off your plate. If you want to increase sales fast, delegate marketing related tasks that are on your “must-donever-have-enough-time” list.

MELANIE BENSON STRICK. Ready to increase your profits by optimizing your business? Get Melanie Benson Strick’s free manifesto “The Profit Challenge: 15 Commonly Untapped Strategies for Exponential Growth” at www.beyondoptimumperformance.com so you can outperform your best year ever!

A D D

M Y

C R E A T I V E

T O

Y O U R

P R O J E C T

Mary Greenlees | Graphic Designer

art@coloursomethingcreative.com

Tel 705.737.1920 | Cell 705.305.7608

www.coloursomethingcreative.com

38 | ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013

AFFILIATE & PARTNER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT

THE IMPORTANCE OF A COMPREHENSIVE AFFILIATE PARTNER RESOURCE CENTRE WRITTEN BY PAM IVEY | IMAGE COURTESY OF SUPHAKIT73

reating an affiliate program is an opportunity for you to have tens or even hundreds of other people marketing your products and services for you, driving traffic to your sales pages, generating many times more revenue than you can on your own. It’s like having a door-todoor salesperson selling your products and services for free. And, you don’t pay them until they make a sale. Creating an affiliate program and getting people to sign up is only part of the steps involved in creating a successful affiliate program. One of the most important items is to provide comprehensive resources to your affiliates that they can easily use to promote your products and services. It’s critical to the success of your affiliate program to make it as easy as possible for your affiliates to promote. Aside from providing good products (this is a given), you also need to provide high converting sales pages, attractive commission, and top notch tools and assistance. Giving your affiliates a couple of a banners isn’t enough. They need to be able to access a truly comprehensive affiliate resource center that has everything they need inside to succeed as an affiliate

for your company. Face it, most people aren’t going to expend the time, money and effort necessary to create graphics on your behalf to sell your product. Even if they did, it might not be the quality that you'd like representing your brand.

INSIDE THE RESOURCE CENTER PROVIDE: • BANNERS Provide easy to cut and paste banners with their affiliate number already inside. If you make them type in anything, or download and host the image themselves, it’s going to make it harder for them. They should be able to cut, paste, promote and earn. • GRAPHICS Aside from banners other side graphics and buttons and choices are always a good thing. Even graphics that they can pair with a blog post will make them work harder to promote your products. • SAMPLE EMAILS Create several sample emails that your affiliates can use by editing and making them their own. This will spur their creativity and give them ideas of what others are doing, making it easy for them to duplicate. ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013 | 39

AFFILIATE & PARTNER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT • EZINE BLURBS If they buy advertising or have their own email newsletters make it easy for them to cut and paste a blurb into the space with Ezine blurbs. This is just one to four lines of text with an affiliate link to promote your products.

• EBOOKS EBooks that can be rebranded with your affiliates personalized links can become viral passed from one person to the next. This is a great way to promote your products and services and a wonderful thing for your affiliates to use as email list bait.

• SAMPLE BLOG POSTS Give them blog posts that they can edit, demonstrating how to place in text links and images into the blog post to make it more compelling. Give them editing tips, and directions so that they will be successful.

• FAQ Include a FAQ inside your affiliate resource centre that helps your affiliates know how to answer questions and promote your product correctly.

• ARTICLES Provide links to articles about your products and services as well as cut, paste and edit articles that they can use to promote your products and services. The more education they have the better.

• TESTIMONIALS Both sides of the equation need testimonials – include them from affiliates who’ve earned money from your product as well as from customers who’ve benefited from purchasing the product. Let your affiliates reuse the testimonials to promote your product.

• VIDEOS People like to promote information in new ways, and video is very popular today. Consider including brandable video that enables them to use as is, or edit for their own purposes in promoting your products. • SALES LETTERS Some affiliates like to create their own domains to promote your products and services, help them by providing example sales letters that they can use to create a sales page or an email sales letter. • SEMINARS/WEBINARS At least a couple times of year have a seminar or webinar to promote a special product and let your affiliates invite everyone with their affiliate link.

Provide top-notch support to your affiliates. Consider having monthly Q & A sessions and training on the products or programs to help affiliates make more sales, as well as contests and other opportunities to win prizes and make more money for your top affiliates. You’re offering your affiliates a way to make more money for their business, why not teach them how to be successful at it? The more people who become successful promoting your products, the more successful you will become. The more tools and resources you provide the more likely you are to have a successful affiliate program.

INFOGRAPHIC - CLICK IMAGE TO VIEW

40 | ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013

AFFILIATE & PARTNER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT

The POWER of

JOINT VENTURES

WRITTEN BY PAM IVEY | IMAGE COURTESY OF ADAMR / FREEDIGITALPHOTOS.NET

Joint Venture is when two or more businesses join together for a common cause to promote a common product or service or event in the hopes of also promoting their own products and/or services outside of their own network. Joint ventures (JVs) can be very powerful ways to expand your reach and increase revenue.

sharing promotion of the event or product you’re involved in with the JV you'll reach even more people faster.

BY ENTERING INTO A WELL PLANNED JOINT VENTURE YOU WILL:

EXTEND YOUR TALENT You’re good at technology, someone else is good at writing copy, and another person is great at creating graphics. Together you can use all that talent to collaborate on various products and / or services extending your talent beyond only what you alone can do or know. That creates a very powerful partnership.

BOOST YOUR OFFERINGS VALUE

By having many different people of various talent levels making suggestions for products and adding in their own products and / or services the value your target market will receive from participating is even higher than normal.

INCREASE YOUR REVENUE

BUILD YOUR LIST FASTER

The power of joint ventures rests with the people who are involved. Choose your partnerships well. Get to know the people that you want to work with so that you know their work ethic matches your own. Step outside of your comfort zone by looking for people to partner with at various events and start talking to them by commenting on their blog posts, articles, and socializing with them on social media.

You already know that “the money is in the list” and that a large, targeted and responsive list is an imperative in today’s online business success model. One of the fastest ways to build your list is by participating in JV partnerships because everyone agrees to promote to their own lists.

ENLARGE YOUR RESOURCES

If your team is lacking funds to expand a product or service, or afford to hire outsourcers, perhaps one of the JV partners has deeper pockets and is willing to provide these funds to the JV partnership in exchange for sweat equity from the other JV partners.

EXPAND YOUR REACH

Working with other people automatically increases your reach due to giving you access to their connections and you expand theirs by giving them access to your connections. By combining resources and talent and

onlinemarketing manager Magazine is a rich resource to help online marketing consultants and other service providers step into their power with confidence and know-how.

Obviously by building a bigger list, expanding your reach, and promoting more valuable goods and services to your target audience you’ll massively increase your revenue potential. Bigger List + Better Product = More Revenue.

Once trust has been established take it farther by asking the connection whether they’re interested in creating a JV partnership by working on a small project together first to see how it will go. Even if you don’t want to work with someone again, it’s okay because you’ll get so much out of different JV partnerships over time than sticking with only the same partnerships. Remember, it’s about expanding your reach and increasing your bottom line. That’s the power of joint venture partnerships.

Do you have a story that demonstrates a way forward and can be just the information or insight they need when they reach roadblocks or feel like giving up on their business dreams?

Connect with us at ommmagazine@iaomm.com with your story idea. ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013 | 41

STRATEGY

the

Perfection

TRAP

WRITTEN BY PAM IVEY | IMAGE COURTESY OF IPROSTOCKS / FREEDIGITALPHOTOS.NET

t’s perfectly acceptable to have high standards. There is nothing wrong with wanting to organize your day and move through it in an orderly pattern accomplishing everything on your to-do list. But, if what you are calling perfectionism is causing you to not deliver final products then you don't have a problem with perfection, you have a problem with procrastination. Procrastination comes from either the fear of failure or the fear of success. But what happens is that you or your team get so tied up in the details of something that nothing ever gets accomplished. You’re missing deadlines, you’ve been working on one project for three times as long as your schedule dictated, and you’re not doing well on getting anything done on time. This is a huge problem for you and your business. To get over the perfection trap it’s important to accept that what you are calling perfection might not be perfection at all, but instead procrastination or it could just be under-estimating how long a project will take. Take a look at your calendar to find out what is causing the hold ups to get to the bottom of your situation. Let’s use the example of producing content.

Every business today has to produce content to advance their business so it’s a good example.

MOST BUSINESSES TODAY HAVE TO PUBLISH SOME OR ALL OF THE FOLLOWING CONTENT: • • • • • • •

Blog Posts Videos eBooks eReports White Papers Newsletters Podcasts

It’s also likely that each of these types of content have various teams working on them under various deadlines. Blog posts usually need to go out most often, and newsletters a little less often, but if you find that you’ve set up and missed your deadlines on any of this content and you are doing so on a regular basis it’s important to figure out what is happening and why you’re doing it. The fact is, without a good content publishing schedule your efforts will not be effective, so it’s important to get to the bottom of the matter.

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42 | ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013

STRATEGY ARE DEADLINES REALISTIC? The first thing you can do is ask those who are late with their work why they are late. Is it an issue with the deadlines themselves? Perhaps two weeks was not long enough to produce a 50 page White Paper.

IS IT A PERSONNEL ISSUE? There are times where one person can put a kink in the entire works of any business. Look at the late projects and check if it’s coming from the same department or people. Sometimes, believe it or not, it can be the project leader holding things up by not doing his or her part. If you’re the leader and you’re not giving your people the work they need to do, you need to get your stuff together so that everyone can manage their schedules better.

IS YOUR CONTENT FOCUSED? Sometimes the reason content doesn’t get published regularly is that it’s not focused enough. A great example is the blog post. A blog post should be laser-focused on one topic and

not a huge novel that goes off the rails. If you have that much content you should outline it, and then pick one point in the outline for each blog post. Alternatively, write a book, white paper, or report with the information, not a blog post.

DO YOU HAVE AN ACTIONABLE PLAN? To be successful in any endeavor it’s imperative to have a plan. Creating plans and schedules will make you more productive if you also create actionable to-do lists along with your plans and schedules and ensure that your team is aware of the overall schedule and how each piece fits into the puzzle of the final deliverables. Finally, let go of a little control over deliverables. Micromanaging isn’t the same organizing and planning. Trust the people you’ve put together to deliver quality work even if it might be a little different than how you might have done it yourself. Done, is often better than perfect because a well moving and flowing content strategy will always work better than one with so-called perfect content that doesn't get out to your market.

INFOGRAPHIC - CLICK IMAGE TO VIEW

ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013 | 43

PROJECT & TEAM MANAGEMENT

PUT SOME

JET FUEL behind your

ONLINE MARKETING MANAGEMENT

Powering up with project management skills lets you command your marketing portfolios.

re you an Online Marketing Manager? Well, whether you realize it or not, you are a project manager too! The high-pressure, demanding role and accountability of an OMM (Online Marketing Manager) is strikingly similar to that of a PM (Project Manager). Check it out. Both of these highly skilled positions require end-toend development of a marketing strategy (project plan) in partnership with or on behalf of the business owner. The OMM needs to take the overall marketing goals and translate them into all the activities and piece parts (campaigns, SEO, analysis, email marketing, web work, social media and much, MUCH more – many of these things projects in themselves!) that will become part of the implementation plan. The OMM also has the job of monitoring of all the detailed tasks related to marketing the business as well as managing a team of

44 | ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013

WRITTEN BY ROBIN COVEY AND DEBRA EXEL functional experts who are doing the actual work. Just like a PM, the Online Marketing Managers must have exceptional communication skills, the ability to lead and manage teams, be responsive in fluid, rapid-paced conditions, work to deadlines and control multiple projects and initiatives at once. Whew! There is so much pressure these days to launch programs, provide services, or make changes - quickly and efficiently. It takes more than just great organizational skills to keep everything on track ... it takes some project management know-how. It’s the secret weapon for getting things done and staying on top of your game. If you work in the real world, you are likely managing multiple projects for multiple clients – is there anything more challenging than trying to keep all those plates spinning in the air? Dropping an important ‘plate’ can have serious impact for your client … and your reputation.

PROJECT & TEAM MANAGEMENT So here’s our big 3 moves for managing multiple projects: 01 Create a big picture. Literally. It’s not unrealistic to have many critical tasks from several projects all coming due at the same time. For this reason, it’s important to plan and develop your schedules with all your projects in mind so you end up with one master plan. This way you can identify conflicts and resource pressures (for yourself as well as your team members) and create a contingency plan. Being able to see at a high level what your priorities are and where projects or initiatives will be competing for resources or intersecting will allow you to create alternate plans or solutions (and hopefully avoid disaster!).

02 Never underestimate the importance of people Believe it or not, communication can be 80% of managing a project and most business relationships! You can manage expectations with clients and team members so much more effectively when you have good communication tools and channels in place. It’s one of the best ways to avoid problems ... and surprises. Be sure to check in with the team every day – even briefly – to be sure the work is being done or to find out if there are any issues. It also demonstrates to your resources that they are not working in isolation and that someone is depending on their output. You need these people to get their tasks done right and on time so your schedule is not in jeopardy.

ROBIN COVEY AND DEBRA EXEL. Get It Done Project Management’s Robin Covey and Debra Exel both hold Masters Certificates in Project Management from George Washington University and are certified process improvement facilitators specializing in helping other online entrepreneurs and businesses develop successful project management skills. With about 25 combined years as Senior Project Managers with backgrounds in technology, new products, process improvement and HR initiatives, Robin and Debra have used their hard-won wisdom and experience to create a practical project management approach for busy online professionals who are focused on driving results and profit in their business. Learn more at www.getitdoneprojectmanagement.com

03 Manage everything … online If you are managing multiple projects and managing a team (or teams) you need a place to monitor and manage the master plan of all your projects: the resources, key dates and deliverables. Ditch whatever manual process you might be using today and get an online project management or collaborative tool. Beyond the organizational and communication benefits that reside in these systems, it’s the best way to always know the status of a project so you can pounce on any stalled tasks, reassign work or resources, or report progress to your client – all centralized at your fingertips. When your online tool is set up correctly and monitored daily, you have access to information … and you have CONTROL. You can make sure everyone’s doing their job and nothing’s slipped through the cracks. Added bonus: you’ll never disappoint a client because your spreadsheet didn’t remind you of a due date.

ROBIN COVEY

DEBRA EXEL

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Project management skills will give you the confidence and ability to be more successful in your Online Marketing Manager business while adding a professional approach to work that clients absolutely love. Get the skills, take control and start managing with jet fuel for those results you and your client want! ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER DECEMBER 2013 | 45

Become the Conduct ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER CERTIFICATION

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UPCOMING EVENTS Have an event youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d like included in our list? Drop us a line with all of the details to editor@ommmagazine.com

DATES EVENT NAME LOCATION URL ABOUT June 17 - 19, 2014 Internet World London

http://www.internetworld.co.uk/ DIGITAL MARKETING

June 18 - 19, 2014

Social Media Amsterdam http://2014.socialmediastrategiessummit.com/amsterdam/ Strategies Summit SOCIAL MEDIA

June 24 - 27, 2014

Amsterdam Amsterdam http://www.igbaffiliate.com/events/amsterdamaffiliateconference/ Affiliate Conference AFFILIATE MARKETING

July 8 - 9, 2014

Ad Tech Singapore Singapore

July 8 - 9, 2014

Ad Tech Kyushu http://www.adtech-kyushu.com/en Kyushu DIGITAL MARKETING

http://www.ad-tech.sg/ DIGITAL MARKETING

July 14 - 16, 2014 MozCon Seattle http://moz.com/mozcon SEO, CONTENT, PPC, ANALYTICS, SOCIAL MEDIA August 10 - 12, 2014

Affiliate New York Summit East

http://www.affiliatesummit.com/ AFFILIATE MARKETING

September 8 - 11, 2014

Content Cleveland Marketing World

contentmarketingworld.com CONTENT MARKETING

September 15 - 18, 2014

Inbound Boston http://www.inbound.com/ Marketing Summit INBOUND MARKETING

September 17 - 18, 2014 Ad Tech Tokyo http://www.adtech-tokyo.com/en/ Tokyo DIGITAL MARKETING New York September 30 - Oct 3, 2014 SMX East

http://searchmarketingexpo.com/east/ SEARCH MARKETING

October 21 - 22, 2014

Ad Tech London http://www.ad-techlondon.co.uk/ London DIGITAL MARKETING

November 5 - 6, 2014

Ad Tech New York New York

http://na.ad-tech.com/ny/ DIGITAL MARKETING

November 20 - 21, 2014

SMX Las Vegas Las Vegas

http://searchmarketingexpo.com/socialmediamarketing/ SEARCH MARKETING / SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING