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Sure, Joe Karbo made a mint off his book sold through direct response, “The Lazy Man’s Way To Riches.”
Of course, he was selling a dream. Not reality.
When you look at reality, overnight successes come after years of nose-to-the-grindstone work. Lazy people just sit on the couch every night and about all they do is throw their own pity-party, wondering why they’re not getting ahead.
And even if you’re chasing the latest opportunity… You’re still lazy. That’s still lazy behavior. You’re wanting someone else to do the work for you.
To truly get ahead you have to blaze your own trail. You don’t play the game, you create it. And you make it happen — no matter how much sweat and pain and tears and joy and happiness and passion and drive and determination it takes.
There’s no resting on your laurels until you have them my friend. And even then, that’s a good way to lose them.
Do you want to get ahead?
Try this on for size (courtesy of the late, great Gary Halbert):
The best way to get started is to get started.
Movement always produces more results than meditation.
Attack life. Wait for nothing.
He has half the deed done who has made a beginning.
The future starts today (right now)… not tomorrow.
There’s no choice if you’re serious about success. You have to hustle. You have to move. You have to make things happen.
And then, it’s funny how the results often begin to add up to be more than the sum of your effort.
In the article below I reveal a surefire (and remarkably simple) technique for finding out if people search for your type of business on Google. Use this technique before you spend a penny to determine if building a website for your business will be a profitable investment.
Internet marketing firms and website builders will usually tell you every business needs a website… especially when they’re trying to sell you something.
Well… Contrary to popular belief…
There are still a solid cases for some businesses not to be online… yet.
In fact today I’d like to show you a simple method for determining if people search for your type of business online. This can be the key determining factor in deciding whether or not to invest in a website for your business.
This tool exists to tell you a few things. One, how many people search for specific terms, or keywords, that you’re interested in. Two, what keywords are similar to the ones you’re interested in. And three, what sort of advertising competition exists on the keywords you’re researching.
I’m going to show you how to use it to find something else.
I’ll show you how to discover how many people search for your type of business on Google. Because if nobody’s going to Google to search for your type of business, it’s probably NOT worth putting a website online for it. However, if there ARE a lot of searches on Google for your type of business, then you absolutely SHOULD have a website so you can be found over your competitors.
So let’s jump in and check out this tool…
When you first hit the website you see something like this:
We’re going to do our work on the right-hand side of that box.
Start in the box where it says “Enter one keyword or phrase per line:” and enter a general word that describes your type of business.
Start very general here.
If you have a Chinese Dim Sum Restaurant, type in just “restaurant.”
Below that you could type “Chinese restaurant” and “Dim sum restaurant” too, if you’d like. But be sure to include the general overarching category for your type of business.
Also leave the “Use synonyms” check box checked and the tool will give you a more general picture of your market online.
Then follow the instructions and type in the characters you see in the picture — this is Google’s way of making sure you’re a human using their tool and not just a computer program designed to yank out data and abuse the system.
You do not have to use the “Filter my results” link.
Then click “Get Keyword Ideas.”
Next, you should see something like this:
Now we’re going to do a very minor but important step, and that’s sort the results. Click on the words “Approx Avg Search Volume” at the top of the second column from the right to sort by that stat (it’s my preferred stat to sort by because it represents search trends over time).
So that should give you something that looks like this:
Now we’re getting somewhere!
Like I just said, I like to look at the “Approx Avg Search Volume” column because I think that represents the most reliable data over time. The number you see is an approximation of how many searches are done on Google in a month that contain that keyword.
So in an average month, people will type “restaurant” into Google 24.9 Million times…
In an average month people will type the words “italian restaurant” into Google 550,000 times…
And one of our keywords, “chinese restaurant” will be searched for in an average month 450,000 times…
That’s a lot of people searching for restaurants!
Of course, based on my default settings this is a snapshot of the entire United States (sorry, can’t drill down any further) so you have to take it as what it is.
However, if you consider that the population of the United States is about 300 Million people, that means every month there’s roughly 1 Google search for restaurant for every 12 people you see out walking around.
Of course, when you look at “Chinese restaurant” specifically, there’s only 1 search for every 660 or so people every month (.15%). However, let’s imagine that you’re the first website that comes up when someone searches for “Chinese restaurant” in your local area. If you can leverage this position to get .15% of your local population to visit every month, you’re getting incredible ROI from your website.
Let’s do some quick math.
.15% of 250,000 (small local population) is 375, multiply that by a $30 average ticket — because they didn’t come alone — and you get $11,250 per month from your website. Even if only half of those are new customers who come because of your website, that’s $5,625 per month from your website. Now that math won’t work out 100%, but it starts to make an investment of a few thousand in a website seem very reasonable.
I would say unequivocally that if you have a restaurant — whether it’s Italian, Chinese, or some other cuisine — that you should have a website.
Now let’s look at another — smaller — industry
Let’s try this same thing for “pet grooming.” I’ll include “cat grooming” and “dog grooming” too because those are the two primary niches within pet grooming. I’ve gone fast forward through the steps above to get the sorted results:
Because this is a smaller industry, let’s take my technique one step further.
In the restaurant industry I omitted this step because it quickly became clear how much opportunity there is for a local business to build a business website that would return high ROI.
In a smaller industry like pet grooming, taking this extra step will help you determine how much opportunity is actually available — when a quick snapshot doesn’t give you the confirmation you need.
It’s as simple as adding it up.
So at a quick look, here are the relevant keywords with their approximate average search volume (I’m omitting keywords that look like “do it yourself” searches because these are not customers for a pet grooming service):
pet grooming – 368,000
dog groomers – 60,500
dog groomer – 49,500
pets grooming – 33,100
dogs grooming – 22,200
pet nail grooming – 22,200
mobile pet grooming – 14,800
groom dog – 12,100
mobile dog grooming – 9,900
cats grooming – 8,100
pet dog grooming – 8,100
groom pet – 5,400
If my math is right, that’s 591,700 searches per month across these keywords. Which is more than the 450,000 searches I based my math for “Chinese restaurant” on above. So even though 368,000 is smaller than the number for Chinese restaurant, it becomes clear quickly that there is a lot of opportunity for a local business to put a website online in the pet grooming business.
Quick side note: If you have a high customer value (let’s say $5,000 per customer instead of $30) then you don’t need traffic anywhere near these levels to make your website pay off. In a case like that just getting one or two customers from your website can make an investment of a few thousand be worth every penny and more.
And now for an industry that may not need a website.
I had to rack my brain and do a few searches and I could be wrong on this, but I did find one industry that my technique suggests may not need a website for your local business.
If you run a business that exclusively teaches aerobic fitness classes (not a gym with classes, just classes alone), then the opportunity may NOT exist for you to create a local website for your business that will be profitable.
Here’s a snapshot of traffic stats for “fitness classes” and “aerobics classes” and related keywords:
As you can see, the numbers there just don’t add up to anything that makes sense. So I wouldn’t suggest building a website to promote a business that exclusively offers aerobic fitness classes — at least not without some more research.
So there you have it!
Use this technique as you decide the answer to the question, “Should my business have a website?”
It’s a definite way of finding out if people are searching for what you’re offering online. And if there’s enough traffic you can be reasonably confident that your local business can build a website that will pay off dividends.
Of course there’s more to the story.
How to do it? What to put on the website? Who to have help?
Those are questions to be answered a different day. Stay tuned.
Want a simple way to be successful in business, sales, and marketing (negotiation, too)?
It all boils down to this:
“Find out what customers want, and give it to them.”
Simple enough idea, but how do you do it?
How about setting up an AdWords campaign to drive customers to a survey where you ask them what they want?
Then developing a product based on the results of that survey?
Then using the same AdWords campaign to drive traffic to the product page for this new product?
Then you can even test other related traffic sources to see if they’ll be profitable too.
Sure, there are more details to this. But it’s a simple and reliable way to break into a new market or to follow a new off-shoot of your current market.
Another option is to ask a subsection of your customer list to take a similar survey.
All you have to do to find out what people want is to ask. Then you can find a way to give them exactly what they’re looking for (and having trouble finding elsewhere). They’ll reward you handsomely for your efforts.
And the best part — once you have an effective system for doing this, you drive your chances of failure to almost nil.
I don’t know if you know this about me — I produce electronic music. So my never-ending pile of magazines that I go through every month not only includes magazine after magazine on business, entrepreneurship, and direct marketing… But also on producing music and the latest trends in electronic music.
(Plus the staples like Reader’s Digest to help me keep my finger jammed down on the pulse of everyday America.)
So I was recently reading a copy of Electronic Musician, when a little sidebar jumped out at me.
It’s title?
The Bill of Rights for Songwriters and Composers
It’s a listing of 10 rights ASCAP has put together for all songwriters and composers. The interesting thing about it to me was not just that it was done, or even how relevant it is in today’s environment of producing and distributing creative works (and all the accompanying piracy, illegal sharing, and gray area use of others’ creative works)…
But really how relevant it is outside the field of songwriting and composition.
Here’s what I think…
This listing of 10 rights is a must for ALL content producers — REGARDLESS of the nature of the content being produced.
This means it’s your rights when you write a blog.
It’s your rights when you write a book.
It’s your rights when you produce a teleseminar.
It’s your rights when you put a video on YouTube.
It’s your rights whenever you produce ANY content. Especially content released for public consumption.
We have the right to be compensated for the use of our creative works, and share in the revenues that they generate.
We have the right to license our works and control the ways in which they are used.
We have the right to withhold permission for uses of our works on artistic, economic or philosophical grounds.
We have the right to protect our creative works to the fullest extent of the law from all forms of piracy, theft and unauthorized use, which deprive us of our right to earn a living based on our creativity.
We have the right to choose when and where our creative works may be used for free.
We have the right to develop, document and distribute our works through new media channels – while retaining the right to a share in all associated profits.
We have the right to choose the organizations we want to represent us and to join our voices together to protect our rights and negotiate for the value of our music.
We have the right to earn compensation from all types of “performances,” including direct, live renditions as well as indirect recordings, broadcasts, digital streams and more.
We have the right to decline participation in business models that require us to relinquish all or part of our creative rights – or which do not respect our right to be compensated for our work.
We have the right to advocate for strong laws protecting our creative works, and demand that our government vigorously uphold and protect our rights.
There are three areas a business has to succeed to be healthy in the long term.
Managing people.
Managing product lines.
Marketing/sales/business development.
Managing people means keeping workers happy without letting them control the business decisions. Especially when it could be detrimental to the business. Organized labor has too much control over Detroit’s big three and have developed non-sustainable demands — they are literally choking to death the companies they rely on.
Toyota and Honda have fended off union control so far. (Keeping employees happy goes a long way.) That’s one reason they’re not in the same mess the others are.
If your business is good at managing people, you’ve succeeded at one of the three pillars of business success and are unlikely to need a bailout like Detroit’s big three.
Managing product lines means finding out what flush, hungry mobs want and giving it to them. In this green, energy-conscious world with gas prices spiraling out of control, there’s a new Hummer. Enough said there.
VW won with the ugly, cramped little Beetle when the cars of the 50s and 60s were mostly gas-guzzlers and people were looking for something different. And Honda and Toyota are mostly on target with their high gas mileage, environmentally friendlier cars. Small is big now, and if Detroit is slow to recognize that and react to the market it’s not taxpayer’s responsibility to bail them out for their poor product choices.
When’s the last time you looked at what flush, hungry mobs were asking for, and gave it to them? It’s a valuable thing to do…
Marketing, sales, and business development means taking a product that was created for a specific market, and introducing the market to that product. Then asking for the order. Not a fancy commercial produced to win advertising awards with pop-ish music and fancy graphics.
Sure, it makes you feel good when your ad agency takes you out for a $1,000 steak dinner because they won an award on your dime (and then charges it to your company in a transaction you’ll never see), but is this really growing your business?
How about a few commercials with a reason why I should prefer your product over every other one available in the marketplace, tied with benefits of buying your product and doing business with you, and finally tying in the commercial with something going on at the local dealership right now, such as an event I can go to? It’d be a start in the right direction.
I don’t have much sympathy for failing automakers. I feel sorry for people who feel they have no control, and who may lose their jobs when those companies go under. But we can’t get into the habit of propping up companies who fail on so many levels, just because the company is big. Then nobody learns and the cycle continues.
Most people know GoDaddy.com for their raunchy Super Bowl ads and don’t realize how much advertising it really takes to make them as successful as they are. And they’re no chumps when it comes to advertising either.
What I didn’t know about GoDaddy.com is how much CEO and founder Bob Parson’s philosophy of advertising lines up with mine.
Watch this video and learn his 9 rules for advertising that works (I’ve included my notes below):
GoDaddy.com CEO and Founder Bob Parsons’ 9 Secret Rules for Successful Advertising
Start small. Don’t blow a fortune on advertising that hasn’t proven itself in smaller tests first.
Exit strategy required. Don’t get yourself into a situation where you’re locked into an advertising contract when the advertising isn’t working. There are plenty of places to blow your budget. Take your advertising dollars elsewhere.
It works now or never. If your advertising isn’t bringing returns today, don’t believe the ad salesperson when they say, “Customers won’t respond until the 7th time they see it.” Sometimes customers will, sometimes they won’t. But if your ad works today it’s certainly worth running again.
Effective advertising pays for itself. If you can’t trace returns on advertising to prove it’s paying for itself within days or the first couple weeks, it’s not effective advertising. Even GoDaddy’s Super Bowl commercials play this out — I read once that each time GoDaddy has run a Super Bowl ad they’ve been able to attribute a significant long-term increase in business to their campaign.
Measure and test. This is critical for that last rule to work. If you’re not measuring you don’t know what’s effective and what’s not. And testing lets you compare what works and what doesn’t and apply your learnings for future success.
Effective advertising must be coupled with a good ordering process. Whether it’s your website, your sales call center, or customer service, the customer must feel comfortable responding to your advertising and placing an order. You can kill the order as soon as you thought you had it by failing here.
Make it stand out. To be effective your ads have to get noticed. And to get noticed they have to stand out. Whether you go the bikini-clad women route of GoDaddy.com or choose another method of standing out is a personal and business choice. But no matter what you choose, this rule is crucial.
Controversy is good. GoDaddy.com has found that about 15% of Super Bowl viewers are offended by their advertising. But that’s why I’m talking about past years’ commercials right now in mid-November. Because controversial draws attention and gets remembered. And… As Bob said… Controversy has translated for them into sales — the most important figure to track.
You can’t please everybody. Try to be all things to everybody and you’re nothing to anybody. Find your tribe, your raving fans, your teeming horde — and serve them well. They’ll serve you well in return.
Aside from the loaded half-truths, scientific irresponsibility, and one helluva sales job that went into Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” that movie moved America… and the world… to take action on global warming.
But now there’s an even bigger crisis facing us — a crisis that all sides now admit is nothing short of Earth-shattering.
It’s called debt.
A culture of unaccountable spending has put our National Debt above 10 trillion dollars. That means if we were to reduce the debt by $1 every second, it would take over 316,000 YEARS to pay off the national debt.
For 2 years in a row American’s savings rate was negative — meaning we spent more than we made. The last time that happened was the Great Depression (and at that time this piss-poor economic trend happened AFTER a stock-market crash). When the savings rate is negative, less is invested in long-term improvements of the quality of life, and more is invested in paying down debt. By living high on the hog this year we’re setting ourselves up for bread lines and soup kitchens in the years to come.
Social Security is currently running at a surplus — this means more money is being brought in than is going out to pay for the program. Unfortunately, that money is being spent elsewhere within the federal government. When that surplus becomes a deficit (when the brunt of baby boomers retire) by 2017, Social Security will start sucking funds away from other federal programs. Then, this culture of unaccountable, irresponsible spending will get really nasty.
And those are just the beginning.
For one, we’re borrowing that money from somewhere. And no, it’s not Americans, like we did with bonds during World War II and before.
Nope, we’re borrowing the money from China and other economic super powers who at some point may come knocking. And they won’t be nice when we’ve screwed ourselves into a position where paying is too difficult. (They could bury the value of every penny of our currency by maliciously off-loading our debt.)
Listen, it’s your responsibility (and mine, and everyone else’s) to really start to think about whether or not we should be accountable for spending less than we make, and storing away the extra to keep ourselves solvent and our economy strong.
It’s also our responsibility to look at what goes on in Washington D.C. and decide if we want to continue to put up with politicians borrowing money from sources that may not have our best interests at heart, to pay for bloated programs that may be causing more harm than good.
That doesn’t even get into the businesses that take advantage of irresponsible borrowing (such as the banks and lenders that sold ARMs as ways for people with bad credit patterns to buy a home they couldn’t afford).
And the challenge is to do it all in a socially responsible way — that doesn’t just lop off support for those who need it.
We’re coming into some tough times here, folks. And we’re going to have to hunker down and maybe not get everything we want, when we want it.
But the end result will be a better life, a better country, and a better world.
I don’t have all the answers, but at least I’m asking some questions.
Which leads me back to the movie that started this rant — “I.O.U.S.A.”
By all measures I can come up with, it’s more important for Americans to see “I.O.U.S.A.” than it ever was for them to see “An Inconvenient Truth.” It’s more pertinent to our sustained health and that of our children. It will matter more in the short term… and if we can manage to really get its lessons and apply them in our life, it will matter more in the long term too.
It may not be available in theaters near you right now, but you can go to the website http://www.iousathemovie.com/ and watch a “Byte-Sized” 30-minute version. Do it now. For my sake, for your sake, and for the sake of our children.
In search especially, people want what they want and they want it now. Google is constantly working to break their own speed records by giving users their search results even a fraction of a fraction of a second faster.
They tested networked PCs vs. powerhouse servers and found they could serve search results faster with the networked PCs. So they use networked PCs.
The old search algorithms were being pushed to their limits, so search couldn’t work any faster (or so said others). So Google re-wrote their search algorithms.
They’ve shaved every bit and byte and computer decision away until they’ve become a lean, mean, search-serving machine. And arguably the fastest search engine on the planet.
But how does this apply to your business?
First — how fast do customers get product after they order it?
I recently was given the choice between a couple places to buy a book and my deciding factor was based on shipping time. One gave a free upgrade to priority shipping, while the other shipped ground when you paid for ground.
Guess which one I chose…
That’s right — the one that delivered my book faster.
Look for ways to deliver your product faster — even, I’d argue, if it cuts slightly into your profits. It will build customer loyalty and increase the lifetime value of your customer.
Maybe all it takes is adding an overnight delivery option, that the customer can optionally pay for. The customers that want instant gratification will pay for this premium and be happy about it.
Some service businesses may have trouble figuring out exactly how to do this.
But think of this. Some auto mechanics offer an “oil change while you wait” vs. you having to drop off your car in the morning and pick it up at lunch or at the end of the day. Some even change your oil without you having to get out of your car. Which is more convenient? If the price is the same, which do you choose?
If you’re providing business consulting services, maybe you offer an on-site intensive session early in your relationship with a client. That way, you can give them actionable strategies they can start applying right away, while you go back to your office to develop a more thorough plan for their business.
Just use a little creativity and look at ways you can give the client or customer the gratification they need sooner.
I don’t know if you’re familiar with Seth Godin yet. He’s not necessarily who I’d go to if I have something very specific that I need done, like writing a sales letter. But when it comes to an overarching strategy for your business, he has one piece of input that will help you slaughter your competition.
“Be remarkable.”
Do what you do so well, that everyone will want to talk about you. They’ll talk about you to their business associates. They’ll talk about you to their friends. They’ll talk about you over lunch. They’ll talk about you in that “filler” conversation before and after meetings. They’ll talk. And talk. And talk.
Being remarkable — doing things in a way that people want to make remarks about what you’re doing — is what creates word of mouth. And that’s free advertising. Powerful free advertising. Because usually the person who is talking about you has built-in credibility with whoever they’re remarking about you to. This is a credibility you’ll never have through your advertising. And one of the only ways I’ve ever found to leverage this credibility is through doing exactly what Seth recommends — be remarkable.
Taking it one step further, I’d recommend you become Irrationally Committed to being remarkable.
Learn to recognize when you’re wrong… but when you’re right stick it out longer than anyone else has the guts (or irrationality) to do. Often that extra few days — or weeks, months, or even years — is the extra time that means the difference between another failure and a smashing success. It took years for Amazon.com to become profitable. Now if something’s available on Amazon I will often buy it there before I’ll buy it from anywhere else. That’s because Jeff Bezos and crew were irrationally committed to creating the Amazon machine.
There’s an endless stream of stories of entrepreneurs who came up with a remarkable product that fit a specific need (a need backed up by a teeming mob of hungry buyers)… and then they irrationally committed themselves to making that idea successful… and then most struggled through hard times long before they got their business in the black… until one day — after all their resources (emotional, financial, otherwise) were exhausted, they crossed the line… and now they run incredibly successful companies and lead their industry.
It’s not an exact formula for success. At the tactical level it gives you nothing. But as something to inform your entrepreneurial strategy — becoming irrationally committed to being remarkable can pay off in spades.
I’ve been getting big into LinkedIn recently. And now I’ve created a group. It’s called Oregon Marketers Group, and it’s a way for marketers (particularly those interested in or practicing Direct Response) to connect.
If you’re in Oregon and into marketing (Direct Response or otherwise) I encourage you to join. It’s free. And as it grows I see quite a few opportunities developing.
Here’s the complete description of the group on LinkedIn:
This group is a way for marketing and advertising professionals in Oregon to connect. It can be used to share information and insights, plan meetings, and find seminar attendees — even to find new clients and build business partnerships. Although no attendees will be excluded, the bias will be toward direct response marketing, advertising, and sales. Other interests include direct mail, copywriting, internet marketing, database marketing, and other proven business development techniques. The area covered by this group includes the Willamette Valley, Eugene, Springfield, Portland, Salem, Bend, Albany, Corvallis, Roseburg, Medford, Ashland, Coos Bay, Florence, and Newport and surrounding areas.
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