Business Growth and Marketing Start Here.

Time for a change

2011-09-08T06:33:00.000-07:00

For some time we have known that the name Rustic Creek has run it's course. A new name is in the works, it is harder than you think!

The Domain Name, Corporate name and trademark logo are officially up for sale. e-mail your bid to ap@rusticcreek.com if you are interested.

The blog will remain on blogger, however the future writing will be at blog.scottbourquin.com and www.beachstreetnews.com

Build Good Rules for a Good Business.

2011-09-01T17:26:00.000-07:00

He has an Aim Point, Do You?

An updated version of this is now at

Http://blog.scottbourquin.com

Aren’t successful businesses built with good rules? I mean pilots use rules to fly, the big burger chains use rules to make burgers and the government is loaded with rules. Last I heard Pilots were doing a pretty good job getting people where they wanted to go, the burger chains were making good money and the government, ok I’ll skip that one.

As a commercial rated pilot for over a quarter of a century, it is pretty rare that I go flying without a purpose, reason or direction. Even as a student I had a plan and followed the rules. All the while I considered my flying career a success. When I fly, there is always someplace to go, something to see, or something to do in the airplane. Isn’t that a lot like business? When a pilot starts out, he has a destination or an aim point, a plan to get there and a few thoughts in case the plan doesn’t work out.

Doesn’t that sound like a successful business? It does to me. Just like pilots, business owners need an aim point. If they don’t know where they want to take the business how will it ever get there? How can the employees help them get there? That aim point becomes the focus that creates the ‘strategy’. Ask my clients, I make them crazy sometimes with this stuff, but they agree it works.

In flying there are a lot of rules and regulations, just like in business. The flawed thinking that many business owners use to build a business is to create rules. Rules are great for assembly lines and other highly repeatable tasks. As a business owner, I have fallen into this trap once or twice myself. I once heard it said that “Rules are for people that don’t know what to do.” Using that thought process I built step by step rules so all of my people would know what to do. Eventually I was so totally saturated just writing rules trying to cover every situation I forgot why I was in business. Never mind that I was making myself and everyone around me crazy.

Why did I think rules were needed to build a business? Like most business owners I started out working for someone else. My worklife started when I worked for a Burger King while I was in High School. There were exacting rules for everything that happened inside the store during business hours right down to the simple task of filling a soda cup. There were even lines on the cup to show the ice line before filling the rest with soda. I learned a little phrase for filling a tray “Drinks, Sandwiches and then Fries”. These days, when I see fries getting cold waiting for a soda, I want to scream out “Don’t you know it is Drinks, Sandwiches THEN Fries.” That phrase was such a simple and usable rule, it sticks with me nearly three decades after I quit working there.

At some McDonalds now, the rules for filling a soda are so exact they have programmed a machine to do it.

So if rules work for Burger King and soda filling robots at McDonalds, how come they didn’t work for me in my business? It is really a matter of perspective. At Burger King, I was employed to run a business. As a business owner I was trying to build a business. When you are running a business, there isn’t anywhere to go; you just need to fulfill the customer’s orders. As an owner, the perspective changes and you always need to be thinking about building the business. The adage of “If you aren’t growing you are dying” applies directly to business. Owners need to worry about the direction of the business so it can grow. Rules don’t grow a business. A focus on an aim point does.

I realized some years ago the owners of the franchise didn’t have any rule books for how many Burger Kings to build, or what kind of flowers to plant out front. The owners had strategies. The smart owners knew that if the restaurant was clean and well-kept with nice landscaping, it made more money that stores that didn’t. The owners that didn’t keep up their stores won’t make as much money.

As you look at your business, building some rules is ok. If you have a service company, the old saying “Five minutes early is late…” is a great rule. Rules should be very basic and simple. When they get complicated it is time to use strategy and goals instead.

What exactly does that mean?

What it means is that your employees should treat your customers like they want to be treated. This can be sticky if you hire people that have never been treated well. I will save this topic for another day. Basically, there is a strategy for treating customers that has been called “The Golden Rule” for centuries. If you follow the rule you will get the gold.

It also means that your customers should already have an expectation of how they will be treated before they ever get to your business. Your strategy should be clear on your website and the minute they meet you or your employees.

Recently I had an automotive service center owner ask me to go market to, and get all the “soccer moms” in the area to get their car serviced. I asked him to take a walk with me. We walked out the front of the shop and I said, “OK, here you are Mr. Soccer Mom. Two kids in tow, and you are coming here for an service because your check engine light is on. Let’s walk in and tell me if this place says ‘welcome soccer mom’”. He quickly agreed it did not. When we looked at the website, it didn’t either. The print ads? Nope, not them either. Nothing about the business said, “Soccer Mom’s will love an Oil Change here”.

When you walked in the place it said “Cool Car Guy Hangout”. That is the message that the website also portrayed. That is what we should be marketing to, because when those guys arrive, they will get what they expected. The generic Soccer Mom won’t be happy sitting at a bar surrounded by expensive cars watching the racing channel.

When all of the employees know to treat the place like a soccer mom haven, they will make the right decisions and buy the right furniture without any rules. When you build the cool guy hangout the same thing will happen. Many times the owners are looking at opportunities while they inject their “hidden strategy” without knowing it. This guy saw an opportunity to get more business through “soccer moms” but his actions created an environment for racing fans, and that is what his employees continued to build without any rules.

The implied strategy was strong enough to create a singular environment. The rules came as a necessity to meet the strategy, not the other way around.

Huntington Beach Wins the Title in 2011

2011-08-29T10:35:00.000-07:00

The kids in my neighborhood made me proud today. They won the little league world series. This is no easy task. 7000 teams start the 45 day journey to stardom. The road to the trophy is littered with broken dreams and battered hearts.

When a team makes it to the series it is a huge accomplishment. These kids are everything that is missing in most people's lives. I can't help but laugh when I hear that these kids are "lucky", "different" or have "tiger parents". What these kids have is simple. They have what Napoleon Hill called a "definite chief aim". That is it.

What makes these kids "lucky" is their families, coaches and in the case of the Huntington Beach team an entire community that supports their definite chief aim. As adults it is surprising how many people don't have any aim point at all, let alone a definite chief aim?

The final game in the Little League World Series was a great example of why having that definite chief aim is so important to success. Early on one of the Huntington Beach pitchers was hit in the face by a nice line drive. Looking like Nolan Ryan after his famous encounter with Bo, the team kept it together and won the game.

In the final game the importance was once again illustrated with perfection. 12 year old Nick Pratto committed an error allowing the Japanese team to score a run. Most faults would lose focus and give up. Instead Nick stayed focused on his definite chief aim of winning and hit a line drive single with bases loaded to drive in the winning run.

Nick Pratto also had a game changing hit in the regionals that sent the team to the finals.

Later While talking with ESPN, Nick Pratto continued to look like a major league pro saying "Oh, that hit. That hit felt good coming off the bat. I just ... I knew it was over.

How many adults do you know that can keep that kind of focus? There is a reason they are well rewarded you know. Do you have a definite chief aim in life like Nick Pratt as he joined his team in the World Series? What holds you back from achieving your dreams? Find your aim point and don't lose site of it no matter what gets in the way.

Facebook Marketing - Is There a Right Way?

2011-08-01T14:16:00.000-07:00

Marketing a small business today is very different than it a decade ago, and really even a year ago. There is a pretty good book out there called “Changing the Channel” by Micheal Masterson and Mary Ellen Tribby. After reading “Changing the Channel” you would think that you need to spend a million dollars a year to market anything. The Authors of “Changing the Channel” talked about so many different ways to market and advertise that it was mind boggling.

One of the great advantages to small business today is how easy it is to gather information on each of the different channels. The easiest thing to do is to put a different phone number on every channel, and every ad for that matter, during testing to see which ad and which channel offer the most bang for the buck. More importantly you can determine which channels aren’t making you any money.

If you are a little confused by the term channels, think of it this way. Google Ads is a channel, Facebook advertising is a channel, Facebook itself is a channel, Television is a channel, Direct Mail Postcards are a channel.

A decade or so ago, many businesses could survive with a great ad in the local yellow pages. Today that isn’t the case. There can be as many as five Yellow Pages books in a given area to make it more difficult. For the past three or four years, a really well managed ad campaign on Google could do wonders for a small business. Today that channel is starting to get crowded and expensive. So what’s next?

With over 750 million active users, Facebook Marketing becomes the obvious choice. The ad planning looks a lot like Google but the cost per click can be 10 or 20 times higher pushing the cost of acquiring a new customer into the land of no profit. According to a couple of people there is a better way.

Recently I learned about a program teaching Online Marketing companies like mine a better way to use Facebook. It requires some interaction, but aren’t customers worth a little of your time? One of the challenges of being in the Online Marketing space is keeping up. I spend thousands of dollars every month on training, classes and seminars to keep up. Not many are easy enough or practical for a small business owner to use themselves, this one is. The cost is very reasonable, and the information is huge. Step by step video that shows you how to really use Facebook and not be labeled a spammer.

After finishing the program and changing direction on a few Facebook accounts for my clients I realized this guy was on to something. I can’t imagine that a small business owner couldn’t get a good boost out of their business using these techniques on Facebook. My clients are.

Knowing exactly how to place your ads on Facebook to get the best response from likely customers is a huge advantage for any small business. Many of the features on Google adwords have been mimicked by the Facebook team but there are a few Ninja Marketing tricks like the @ mention tag which, can make a huge difference in your response when you use it correctly.

Any small business owner that doesn’t have a Facebook Page for their business should get one today. And any small business owner that wants a much better return will find this Facebook marketing program a bargain. You can of course send me some money and I’ll do it for you, but if you want to try it yourself first, give it a look. I’ll even make this deal. If you buy the program here and decide to have us manage your Facebook marketing, I’ll waive the first months fee’s.

Find your Aim Point and go there!

What Is Your Aim Point?

2011-07-14T16:33:00.000-07:00

Lately I have been working with a couple of people and realized a big problem in small business. The owners don’t have an “Aim Point”. In my book, So Now What?, I talked about the scene in Alice in Wonderland where Alice asks the Cheshire cat which way to go. It seems with the new economic problems more and more people are losing their direction. Maybe they were going in the wrong direction in the first place. Do you know where you are going?

One of the things I included in my book, which you can now get on the kindle for just $2.99 by the way, was worksheets. I put the worksheets in there to get people thinking about their direction in life. Since the book came out I have had the opportunity to talk with several people in person who read the book. Many didn’t even do the worksheets, and guess what? They didn’t make any headway in finding a direction.

Sunset Tow Lead by a KC-10

As a competitive marksman in the military I was always shooting targets. Some big, some small, some close and some far. One of the tricks is to not look at the target, but to focus on the front site of the weapon. This made the target a little blurry, but it also got the shot much closer to the center.

When I became a pilot in the military we had targets too. We called them “aim points”. When I planned a mission to fly from Northern California to some runway half way around the world, I couldn’t yet see the aim point, but I had a direction to go. Only when I could see the destination did the aim point become clear. In order to put 100,000 pounds of metal moving over 120 miles per hour safely on the ground you had to pick an aim point on the runway. While you don’t always land on the aim point, you can get quite close.

If you want to get gas from a Tanker moving at 250 miles per hour, you really needed an aim point.

Think about it, with a little planning and practice, a group of people can move hundreds of tons of metal and machine half way around the world and put it on a piece on concrete 150 feet wide and a mile or so long. So why is it so hard to grow a business?

Growing a business has the same rules and the same problems. First you need a direction. If you own a small business, you absolutely positively must pick a specialty. Something that separates you from what others would call your competitors. You can grow into other areas over time, but at first you really need to have a direction, and as you begin to grow the business, you need an aim point.

Why? Well let me give you an example, two real examples that came from one of my businesses.

I owned a residential systems business, in generic terms I sold home theaters. We decided to become authorized for one of the big Satellite companies so their guys would not mess with our gear. Since we only installed two or three systems a month, adding satellite services meant that we only sold two or three satellite installations a month if we sold 100%. We did about 70%.

We also decided that since our automation systems and remotes for the theaters had home security functions built in we should do this too. Again we only were installing one or two a month.

Another guy just down the road started a business installing satellites, and right next door to us in one of our buildings was an alarm company.

Two years into the program what do you think happened? Well, it turned out that our direction of installing home theaters was spot on, but selecting the multiple aim points didn’t work. The home theater business lost money on every satellite and alarm installation it performed. The profits from the home theaters were subsidizing the alarm and satellite business.

Eventually we flipped and made a deal with the satellite and alarm companies and returned to what we did best. It turned out both of them were making more money, doing less work and doing it with fewer employees. We never go good enough to install the satellites or alarms anywhere near as fast as they could. The alarm company later attempted to add some home audio installations, and sure enough within months, stopped.

The right way to do this is to grow each business as a separate business. Let the home theater guys be the best they can. When you have enough money, hire alarm guys and let them become the best alarm guys. The same process works for satellite.

It doesn’t matter if you have a small restaurant or small gas station. All of the rules apply the same. Just like one airplane can only fly to one airport at a time successfully, your business can only go one direction at a time. As you grow it is like buying more airplanes. Only then can you go more places and hit more aim points.

Find a direction, hit your aim point and don’t ever look back.

What Are You Saying Online?

2011-05-24T08:04:00.000-07:00

In a world where there are over a million new websites every month vying for your customer’s attention, how can anyone sell anything online? There are 100,000 pages a week created just to phish people’s information online. How can your business rise above all of this?

The questions came to me from a business owner who paid well over ten thousand dollars for a website that looked great. The problem he wanted to show me was the Google analytics pages and the chart for the visitors to his website. The chart was a flat zero. He wanted to know how he could have such a great website and zero traffic. After all, isn’t there a big software company touting how easy it is to be found on the web when you get a website with them?

The truth was really a two part answer. First is the easy one. When you post a website you have to market the website. When you market the website you tell the world where it is and what you can do for them. Search Engine Optimization or SEO along with blogging, videos, Pay per Click ads all market your website and bring you traffic. He didn’t do any of that. The “easy website hosting” companies are all giving away the website hosting so they can get your marketing money.

The marketing of the website is more important than the building or even the existence of the website. We can market a company online without a website and have a very effective campaign. So there is a thinker, which comes first, online marketing or the website. My answer for the 40% of businesses out there without a website is of course the online marketing.

The second part of his issue was the difficult one. His website said exactly what he did, nothing or everything. Customers of the online world aren’t looking for the “Jack of all trades”. They are looking for the best price on the specialist that does exactly what they want. Nothing more, nothing less. Search engines reward specialists with high rankings for free. Even on the off chance that someone found this guy’s website, they would be confused by what he did.

The best businesses are painfully narrow in what they do. The best car washes only wash cars, no oil changes, they just wash cars. People looking for a car wash and oil change center are a different customer. Those customers are looking for convenience, not the best wash.

The online world is very specific in what they want and what they are looking for. What are you telling them? What is the one thing you should be saying? Are you? His new website says one thing, can you tell what he does right now for you?

Your Business On Facebook

2011-02-22T07:50:00.000-08:00

One of the aspects of running a business I talk about often is that the owner and the business in many ways are one in the same. This doesn’t mean your marketing should be. You should be marketed separately from your business even if you are the only person in the business. Someday you might want to grow.

Last night I was talking with the GM of a local business, and his boss created a Facebook page for the business. The owner had just added the business to her Facebook profile. She became the business and the business became her on Facebook.

The people at Facebook recognize this problem as well. If you have a business, you can post it separately from yourself using he “as page” function. This lets you create a “Page” instead of a “Profile” for your business.

What is the difference? There isn’t much, “pages” don’t “friend” people like people do. It just makes sense this way. There are some other differences like being able to add an admin. If you have someone that you work with you can let them manage your business “page”, and not have access to your personal “profile”. When your receptionist gets bored, just hand her a digital camera and have her update your Facebook “page”.

While a business represents the views, attitudes and outlook of the owners, it is also better most of the time to let the business take on a life of its own. Separating your information from your businesses on Facebook is a good place to start.

The Business Lessons of Super Bowl XLV

2011-02-06T08:31:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Super Bowl XLV and Super Bowl Sunday! This is a great day to take a break and get re-acquainted with friends. Super Bowl Sunday has become a national past time through the excellent marketing efforts of the NFL. Even if you don’t like football, the NFL has built a show that everyone can enjoy. Even the commercials are more entertainment in themselves. A separate competition for the best Super Bowl ad has been spawned from this phenomenon we call the Super Bowl.

I hope you are watching the Super Bowl with the mindset of a manager looking for a better way or business owner looking to expand and grow. If you do this and spend just a little thought on the lessons the NFL has to offer, you might find some nuggets you can use like these three:

1. Specialize – Look at each and every player in the NFL. They all have a unique position. Something they are continuously improving. Look at each team. They are known for some specific part of the game. Joe Montana and the 49’rs of his era were known for a spectacular passing game that didn’t even start until the fourth quarter.

2. Build Teams – As your business grows and expands each of the tasks that you do can be broken out into a specialty. I have one person I go to for all of my graphics work, one person for my website analysis. Everyone on our team has a specific job, everyone is important but no one can do it all.

3. Have a backup – Every team has backup players for every position. Sometimes players cover other positions in a pinch and the team knows this creates a weakness for the other side to exploit.
Watch the Super Bowl game as if you were a team owner, and notice how differently you watch the game. Think about each of the players in the Super Bowl as members of a business team. Notice how they each have a specialty and think about how much training and effort went into making that slot on the team that made it to Super Bowl XLV.

Business is about winning, just like sports. You have to win the customers attention from your competitors to get them in the door. You have to win over the customer to get a sale and then your team has to amaze the customer so they will tell their friends to come back with them. The NFL has done all of this and more, how can you do it for your business? Think about that today while you are taking your break, and build a better business tomorrow.

Are You Stopping Your Business?

2011-01-17T08:04:00.000-08:00

"When you look in the mirror, you see the biggest troublemaker in your life" - Chinese Proverb

I was walking down the street when I saw a mirror that had this taped to it in a store window. I don't know why it was there, it just was. We all know this to be a very true statement and one that we completely ignore. It is so much easier to say that the car troubles you are having is because the car is poorly made or you need a new car. And it is easier to blame the traffic for being late to a meeting isn't it?

One of the things that most business owners do wrong is love their business. The day I realized I was doing this in the home technology business, I knew I had a problem that would only be fixed by closing the doors. When you love your business, you are building a wall and forcing customers to do the work and climb over it. I am as guilty as the next owner. When I finished my first book, I designed the cover, picked the title, ran them both by a couple of "yes" people and published it. Two years later I met Imal. She laughed and sent this text one day:

u r in luv w your idea.

It took a while for what she was saying to sink in. Eventually I realized the reason I wasn't selling more books was pretty simple. People do judge a book by its cover and I designed a cover and picked a title that I liked. I never bothered to ask the people I wrote the book for what they thought. Since the book was publushed, they have told me loud and clear and yet I still didn't listen. I blamed other things. The obvious problem here is I am not going to buy a copy of my book. At least not enough to get it on to any kind of best seller list.

My new friend Imal was 100% right, I built a roadblock in front of my potential customers. My publisher didn't do it, I did it. There was no one else to blame. A few people that picked up the book out of curiosity really liked it. All of the sales during the first year were word of mouth. I couldn't give them away on the street corner with the cover I picked. The cover hasn't yet changed and the only reason it is selling is a great review from Jim Pawlak and a few favorable blog postings by readers. I won't be doing any more autograph sessions at Borders until it gets a new cover and maybe even a new title.

The truth is if we want to improve our outlook and position in life, we can only talk to one person about fixing it, and that is the person in the mirror. I talk with people every day who are clearly their own road block. I am not going to ask you if you are one of those people I am going to tell you you are one of those people just as the Chinese proverb is. Admit it, and you can help fix it.

There are many different kinds of people in the world, and even the super successful get in their own way once in a while. Sometimes we can talk to the person in the mirror, other times we need to talk out loud to someone else. It doesn't matter if you sit in a confessional, a counselors office or just sit and talk to the mirror, you are both the problem and the answer. The trick is having the humility and the awareness to see the problem.

It took several attempts to get me to understand the problem with my book cover and title. Recognizing I was the problem was only step one. I still had to fix it. In business this step is usually much easier. If you take a walk in your customers shoes, you can usually find the answer. If that doesn't work, ask your customer.

More recently, I had a website that had a free giveaway. The idea was to promote our new DIY training program for smaller businesses. It is relatively inexpensive, easy to follow and the first months information is free. The problem was no one even took the free information, they just called to become a client. While this is good for business, it means I missed the mark in a huge way.

Once again Imal pointed out that my entire business and teaching is about focus, service and growth. Even the way the DIY website was written said pretty clearly "We can do this better than anyone else for you". Why would anyone want to get free information on mowing their lawn with a push mower in just 4 hours a week when they could get a guy with the new hi-speed zero turn, supercharged mower-trimmer-vacuum combination to do it and make it look like a baseball diamond?

Every day without fail, I meet a business owner who is the only person standing in the way of their true happiness and success. Most of the time it is because they are trying to do to many things. I wrote the book "So, Now What?" I should have had a cover designer make the cover. I didn't then, I am now.

There are too many business owners or CEO's that are trying to be the COO, visionary and venture capital developer. Pick one and hire out the others. If you can't afford to pay the other two positions, you definitely can't afford to be them.

All of this comes down to the person in the mirror. Did they pick the right job or business? What is the one thing they could do all day and make themselves happy? What customers could they love more than their business? Figure these out and you will take down a big chunk of that wall that separates your business from both your customers and your success.

NAMM Takes it to 11, And Opens To The Public On Sunday

2011-01-14T07:18:00.000-08:00

Unless you are really into music, you probably have no idea what the NAMM show is. Basically NAMM is like any other industry group. It offers manufacturers a chance to get together with their dealers to educate them and hopefully sell more products. NAMM serves the music business.

Visit The Real Rockers At NAMM

There are industry groups like CEDIA for the home electronics business, CES for the consumer electronics business and Infocomm for techies. The big difference at NAMM is Sunday the public can stop by and join the artists, musicians and engineers to see what the latest and greatest is the music industry has to offer.

An internal message leaked to me by a NAMM member, asked the vendors and manufacturers to please stay open for this important day. Clearly NAMM as a group gets it. The public is the real customer and the only reason the business even exists. Any of the companies that close up shop early and run are missing out on the most important part of the event.

As far back as the 1930's when Claude Hopkins published Scientific Advertising, he noted the companies that had the most success sold to the consumers, creating an automatic demand from the dealers. This isn't new psychology of marketing, it is just a truth many businesses forgot during the go-go growth of the 1990's.

Today is a new or depending on how you look at it an old market. The consumer is king and will always be king. If you are in Anaheim this Sunday, stop by the NAMM show and help the economy remember who makes the real decisions. It isn't the government, it is the consumer.

A New Years Resolution For You And It Is Free

2011-01-03T09:53:00.000-08:00

Welcome to 2011. I don't know if you finish all of your New Year's resolutions yet but I've got one I'd like to add to your list that won't be that hard. In fact if you come back and visit this blog all year all help keep you on track with just a couple hours each month. This resolution has the potential to double your business in the next 12 months. Don't you think that's worth a couple hours a month?

All through 2010, there were two common threads missing from just about every business I talked with. Even those few businesses that we found which were focused on their primary core strength we still found these two threads missing. So I want you to make a resolution for 2011 to fix this for your business. Of the nearly 43,000,000 registered brick-and-mortar businesses in the United States, nearly half don't even have a website. And believe it or not this is not one of those threads. For most of the businesses that don't have a website, they can probably continue to live for years without a regular website if they don't want to.

The more amazing number is that less than 2% have claimed their space on the Internet, and only half of them have bothered to do anything more than claiming their space. Now you're probably wondering how you claim space on the Internet. The truth is there are several ways that you should think about the one much more important than the others. To begin with if your company name is already taken or something close, you should register it. This can be done for less than $20 per year and it prevents somebody else from stealing your business by using your name.

We had a client last year who had someone put up a spoof website using his name. Believe me when I tell you that the stuff posted was not flattering. We had to buy the website and take it down in order to help the customer move forward. For $20 a year you don't want that to happen.

But this isn't what I'm talking about, what I'm talking about is claiming your space on the Internet and the world of mobile and maps. All of this can be done for free and you don't even need a website.

The resolution that I would like to add to your list and I want you to say out loud right now is this:

I will claim my businesses place on the Internet web of maps and mobile. I will make one update and one addition each month until the end of the year. If I don't have time to do this I will pay someone to do this because it is important that I do this.

They are probably still a little foggy on what I mean by this, so I will start the new year off by giving you the first where to go. When I say tip, I'm not talking about some little tidbit of information that is totally useless. I am giving you the exact same steps that we use for our clients and our Mobile Connect Marketing^tm program. This is probably the single most important task you will need to accomplish in order to weave this thread to the fabric of your businesses marketing program.

After you do this, you're going to find that it was amazingly easy to do. It is a three-step task if you don't have a Google Gmail account already. Google will allow you to do this without a Gmail account however we find that they are much friendlier in their system works better if you have a Google Gmail account.

I know that I made you read a lot in order to do this, and this is pretty simple, but like I said, less than 2% of the businesses in the US have done this and it is FREE.

Step One. - if you don’t have a Google account is to go to www.google.com/gmail and get a Gmail Account.

Step Two. – Go to www.google.com/places and click on the Places for Business Link.

Step Three. – Find your business and fill out your place page completely. Here is a link to ours so you can see all of the information that should be there. You want to make sure the three keywords that people would use to describe your business are in the categories and the description. If you have pictures of your location, people and customers post a couple. If you have a logo, post it like we did.

That is it, when you complete this you have moved up to the top 3% of all businesses in America on the internet. If you want to do more right away, our complete workbook is available here.

Is Your Business On Mobile Yet?

2010-12-27T13:13:00.000-08:00

In today’s economy you are probably wondering what is really happing? Your business is still not as good as it was and everything is starting to cost more. The government says there might be 1% or 2% inflation next year and the paper says gas is already up 10%, silver 74%, cotton is up 56% and that means clothes are going up too. What is a business owner to do to survive in this economy?

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Most of us are probably wondering what is the real truth. The important question is really; “why do you care?” Worrying about the entire economy is like banging your head against the wall isn’t it? Your head hurts and the wall hasn’t moved one inch. I propose that we stop worrying and get back to work.

The turmoil in the economy and the move to mobile technology presents some killer opportunities to make your business a runaway success. The entire mission of our marketing business is to help connect your business to your customers. You might wonder exactly what that means. It means we want to help focus customers in a way that guides them to want your products and services. Most importantly, we need to make it easy for those customers to find you and to buy your products and services when they are looking. Don’t make your customers work to buy from you.

Today, mobile internet is growing several times faster than wired or desktop internet. Smart phones are the fastest growing segment of mobile internet. Just today Apple announced a new higher delivery target for the iPhone even with Google’s Android and Blackberry’s new phones also growing in numbers.

Your current customers and potential new customers are both likely to have a smart phone, and if not now, they will very soon. The best part is you don’t even need an expensive website to connect to these customers. For half the price of a good yellow pages ad, you can put your business on the phones of your customers and new customers when they are local and ready to buy.

If you don’t have the time to do it, we offer some very affordable managed programs and can even preprogram some basic ads and messages for you. Let’s say you own a restaurant in Flower Mound Texas and are running slow tonight. You could send a pre-planned text coupon, or have us send an SMS message to your customer list offering a better deal. Maybe Tuesday night is $15.00 steak night which is a smoking deal, and you are still slow. Imagine if you could reach 100 or 200 of your best customers and offer half off desert with the daily special, or happy hour pricing to them after happy hour but ONLY if they show you the message on their phone. How about a one time coupon for “kids eat free tonight only”?

The statistics from the Neilson group show that 95% of all text messages are opened and read. As long as you offer value, your customers will keep opening the messages hoping for the day they can take advantage.

Think of it as building your own savings club membership program that builds your business. Remember, text and mobile email can be forwarded. Even if your customer can’t make it, maybe his friend will. Don’t pay those big company fees for group ads that might work, get targeted ads that do work.

If you aren’t sure how this works, look at Google maps, Google places, Facebook places, yelp! and foursquare. Are you there? If not, get there now. If you don’t have the time drop me a note or give me a call, and I’ll take half off the initial set up if you tell me you read this. We'll set up your QR code link like the one above FREE with any new account.

How Will You Look Back At Your Business Of 2010

2010-12-24T14:17:00.000-08:00

As we get to the end of the year a lot of people are looking back and already saying they are glad it’s over. Yet somehow they aren’t feeling any better about next year. Are you glad that 2010 is almost over? Are you thinking 2011 is going to be worse like most people do? Do you find it at least a little funny that we break up our life and businesses into an arbitrary time period that ends with our most expensive time of the year.

I don’t know about you, but somehow we spend a lot of money every year during the holidays we didn’t plan on. People we forgot, customers we wanted to thank a little more and that one extra thing for someone special that all add up to an empty feeling looking back over the year.

How Do You Think Your Business Will Be In 2011?

In business, we look at last year and make predictions and assumptions about next year. The funny part is how few people really spend the time to understand why anything happened last year. I am not a big fan of reflection at the end of the year. I want you to do just enough to find the 20% of your work that led to 80% of your income. Now you have something to focus on for next year.

Normally that 20% is the stuff you have fun doing, and your customers really like you to do for them. I could do bookkeeping for my clients, and I don’t. Why not? Bookkeepers can make great money. The answer is simple. I don’t have fun doing it, and my clients can easily find other people to do it for less money. By not doing a service I am perfectly capable of, we both win.

Remember 2010 Like A Champion

There is a story about Arnold Palmer that is worth sharing with you here. Mr. Palmer remarked after losing a major golf tournament that things like this happen even when you don’t miss a putt under 6 feet. When a reporter asked him about a putt he had missed during the tournament he replied "Son you're not listening I did not miss any putts under 6 feet."

Arnold Palmer’s attitude of focusing on the positive and only remembering the positive, is a lesson we should all take with us into the new year. When you look at the positive things that happened to your businesses this year, and focus on those areas for next year the effect can be amazing.

I have seen small businesses that have been around for years make triple digit growth numbers after making this kind of change in outlook. Everything you do in your business will change when you change your focus to the positive things. Your marketing will change, your customers will change, and maybe even a few of your employees or contractors will change.

Focus On A Positive 2011

If you look back at all the negative things that happened in your business, you are bound to get more of the same next year. If your marketing didn’t work this year, change it. Apply it in a way that reflects the things that did work. If you worked to hard on projects that didn’t make any money, stop doing those projects and focus your time on those projects that did make money. Make a resolution this year to lighten your load and only carry the positive of 2010 with you into 2011. You'll be happier, your business will run better and your customers will thank you for it.

Why SEO Is Important To Business Owners

2010-12-04T11:04:00.000-08:00

SEO, or as is known by its full name search engine optimization, is the professional practice of making your website easy to understand for search engines. One of the primary methods of doing this is keyword and headline optimization. The key benefit of a good SEO program is that somebody looking for your business is more likely to find your business if you have made it easy for the search engine to understand what your website is about. When someone types in a keyword, the search engine looks at that keyword and analyzes your website trying to find the best match. The search engine select the best optimized websites and put them at the top of the list.

Unfortunately there are people who abuse the system and overload websites with keywords in order to attract customers to a website that really has nothing to do with what they were looking for. This is why Google, Yahoo and Bing also check what are called back links. They look at other websites which might point to your website therefore giving you credibility in your field. The domaineers have figured out how to beat this system also. So how do you get ahead? Well I'll tell you.....

Internet Presence – The Complete Approach

Taking a different approach, and looking at your entire Internet presence as a single organism, you have a much better chance of reaching potential new customers. Isn't that what marketing is all about? Recently Facebook, YouTube and iTunes have been growing in popularity as places to find information. People are searching social media sites as much as they're using search engines these days. More importantly the social media sites have permission to gather information about the person and can better target advertising and information to them.

SEO, just one piece of the puzzle

As a piece of an Internet presence campaign, search engine optimization or SEO is still a key component. The reason is simple the exercises and effort required for proper search engine optimization help focus the business and the advertising. Google has a score called a quality value that attempts to align the keyword to the website. The higher your quality value, the lower your cost for a pay per click advertisement. You get a benefit when compared to somebody else paying the same price for the same keyword because you have done your SEO groundwork.

One of the activities required when it comes to good search engine optimization efforts is keyword selection. Keyword selection is finding somewhere between three and 20 phrases of three or four words that uniquely describe your business. Now if you don't have a unique selling proposition to begin with, it can be rather difficult to come up with unique keyword phrases. This is why I enjoy being strategy coach and a marketing coach at the same time. The Internet has put them together hand-in-hand.

Step one, clear the fuzz

The very first activity that I now ask new clients to engage in is to read a short book called Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins. Scientific Advertising was written in 1930 and is out of copyright, so we give it away free. Additionally I have personally updated every chapter and added a few comments since the Internet did not exist in the 1930s. If you would like a copy, is free to anybody who joins my newsletter, which is also free.

The truth is, since the 1930s effective advertising has not changed one bit. We make the mistake of approaching advertising differently because of the new medium. By reading Scientific Advertising, potential new clients get an understanding of the activities and the depth that we will be involved in trying to clarify their own unique selling proposition or USP.

Scientific Advertising highlights the importance of focus, specifically focus on the client. It really doesn't matter how much you love your business, in fact that is one of the greatest mistakes in business. You have to love your customers because they make your business. Scientific Advertising helps move the mindset of our potential new clients into the mode of looking out for and loving their customers.

The next step is an exercise with the owner has to fill out our four-page questionnaire about their business. It includes questions like “What is your business doing for your customer?” The entire purpose of the questionnaire is to help the owner begin to clarify his vision. 9 out of 10 business owners have difficulty with this exercise. We require them to start this before we accept them as a new client because clarity is required in order to achieve focus. We want to see our customers succeed, and if they aren’t going to do the legwork up front, they probably won’t do it on the back end either. There is no way to focus on a client if they're not clear what benefits those customers or clients receive. Business is a lot more fun when you know where you're going and how you're going to help your customer and make their life better.

Now The Work Starts

Once we have the owner in a position to understand the vision can always become a little more clear, we are ready to start work. With a solid understanding of our approach after reading Scientific Advertising, and a starting point for the vision, there is a foundation to build on. The next step when it comes to SEO and on line marketing, is to build keyword phrases and start analyzing the content of any existing website.

As a simple example, a friend of mine and I were talking about his grandfather's house. He is attempting to sell it on his own and built it truly beautiful website. The house itself was fantastic, it sits on 10 level acres, has a full theater, a mini studio and is just minutes from the town. In fact the village grew up around the house making it centrally located. When I first looked at the website I noticed that none of the keywords were there. All of the text on the website were very generic statements such as “for sale by owner”.

In the example of trying to sell a very unique house, you are trying to use keywords to drill for one of maybe 20 people in the entire United States would be interested in this very unique property. This is where most real estate agents make mistakes in their advertising. In fact it is not just real estate agents. I would guess that 80 to 90% of all advertising is nothing more than putting your ad out there and the only reason is “to reach customers”. Sadly that type of advertising rarely if ever does.

Without a way to connect to the potential client, the ad will never be read. Keywords on the Internet are much like headlines were in the 1930s to Claude Hopkins when he wrote Scientific Advertising. Any decent SEO company or any person doing their own internal Internet marketing should be doing headline testing. Google makes this extremely easy with AdWords and Analytics. You can put up 10 or 20 ads online at the same time and Google will rotate them for you. After a few days or a week and give you the statistics on how the ads are doing you can very quickly see which ads are clicked and which ones are not.

The same is true for keywords, you can see which keywords are bringing new business and which ones are not. This is very important because you will learn what the market perceives of your business. Remember this isn't about you will you or your business this is about your customer what they want and what their benefits are. If you think you're offering a benefit, and the perception is they are getting a different benefit you need to know that and adjust your business according.

As you can see search engine optimization when done properly, is a result of significant efforts on both the business owner and the marketing company. Use caution if you're working with a company that only charges you for the ad, they make money the more you advertise not the more you reach customers.

Reach for Automatic Success

When you get your business focused, you can build a strategy that will automatically lead to a successful Internet presence campaign. If you are not clear in your attempting to marketing everyone on the Internet it won't happen. I'll be broke before you can hire somebody to fix it. So as you can see, SEO important because it brings together several other key aspects that are required to achieve business success.

Get focused and let life be great

Why Success Requires Focus.

2010-11-30T10:27:00.000-08:00

In today's fast-paced world, it is very easy to fall into the trap of entrepreneurial ADD. There are so many opportunities out there it sometimes makes it difficult to know where to start and what to do. Whatever it is that got you thinking about changing jobs are changing businesses are starting a new business, it was probably one thing. When I ran the home theater business, vendors would come to me all kinds of great tools and toys to sell my clients. Everyone of them demanded more time and more attention.

Opportunity overload

It doesn't matter what business you are in, Internet blogging or fast food, someone always has great ideas to add to your business. In today's world there are so many opportunities it begs the question, how do you choose which opportunities pursue.

If you drive around the country you'll find that McDonald is starting to be slightly different in different areas. Some have playgrounds, some are built to mimic a coffeehouse. Even McDonald's is testing different opportunities. In marketing one of the most important tools is testing. We can test headlines can test ads and we can test websites. The purpose of all of this testing is to identify which opportunities have real value.

The how you decide what your opportunity is?

Information overload

Back when Ray Kroc started McDonald, most of the research was done door-to-door or in the library. Salesman and canvassers would knock on doors, ask questions and try to glean some information from the answers they received. If you went to the library, you might see a handful of books on a specific topic. After flipping through a few of the books you might pick one or two to take home and read.

Today we don't spend much time researching and libraries unless you're going to college, even then the Internet may have faster more precise results. That is if you know exactly for. The problem with the Internet is if you start searching for something you can very easily become sidetracked by things related or not related, depending on how you started the search. Microsoft has made some pretty funny commercials about the challenge of true search for the Bing website and search engine.

Strategy with focus

When building or growing a business, it is very important to know exactly where you want to go. The more clearly you can see your target the more likely you are to reach the target. When you have a strong strategy and want to be successful in your business, it makes it much easier to filter out the information that you don't need. If you know exactly what you're looking for when you are looking for it, you're much more likely to find it.

If you want to be the best in any business, the most important thing to do is figure out who is already there. Find out who the best people currently are. They become part of your target. The other big advantage of having a strategy understanding your target or your goal is your ability to filter opportunities. When I own the home theater business, we added security systems and crazy little things like gate controllers. Over time I realized they were very successful businesses that only installed gate controllers, while we were losing money every time we put one in.

As we went back and reviewed our strategy, we irritated a few clients by cutting several areas of work. Gate controllers were the first to go. The next major step was to pare down our line so that we had no more than three products in any category. We found that one point we were carrying nine brands of speakers. We eventually trim that down to two, we found that we could do everything we wanted to do with just two brands. We also found that the people coming in for the missing brands were pretty easy to convert. We eliminated seven brands of speakers and reducing our overall costs in that category by 53%. When we returned to our strategy and fine tuned our focus on our target, the business did far better than our competitors.

Get a Coach

One of the things that sidetracked me from the original business was the fact that I enjoyed coaching and analyzing other businesses. I was helping several other home theater business owners around the country grow their business at the same time that I was losing focus on my own. Most of the businesses that I worked with did significantly better than my own. It wasn't until one of the other owners pointed out how well his business was doing because he followed my advice, and how poorly my business is doing and I was ignoring my own advice.

Having a coach or mentor who understands business can help you find that strategy and focus. It doesn't matter if you want to be a blogger, home theater store owner or a wildly successful attorney. Everyone can benefit from having a coach or mentor. Hopefully at some point in life your success will allow you to become someone else's coach or mentor.

Even the best of professional athletes have coaches. Many of the best professional athletes have personal trainers and coaches beyond those provided by their team. The great basketball players have full indoor basketball courts attach to their house and never stop training. The great golfers have a driving range in their backyard, some like John Daly have built complete holes or golf courses in their backyard. It doesn't matter what sport you look at, when you look at the top performers in that field they have a coach. CEOs have coaches, several good franchise chains offer coaching to their owners. Some have even created complete university style programs to train their franchisees. If you don't think you can afford a dedicated coach, then you should enter a group coaching program like the Strategic Business Mastery course we offer at Rustic Creek.

Personal coaching is one of the fastest and best methods of developing your personal strategy. Your personal coach can offer feedback and suggestions to help you overcome obstacles in ways you would never see on your own. As you go out to find success, act like a pro and get a coach.

To your success….

Use Video For Better Customer Engagement

2010-10-26T21:12:00.000-07:00

One of the great things about being in the internet marketing business is I get to choose my customers. There is more work than I could ever do so I get to say "no" if I don't believe in a business or a product. Some I like so much I'll even make short quick video's myself.

Video is a great way to introduce your business and your products online. Here is a quick video I made for Walt Garrison's Gourmet Texas Rub. This is no store bought seasoning salt, this is a genuine Texas rub, created by a great Texan, and made in Texas.

So when you need some time away from business and just want to kick back and grill some delicious meat, give Walt Garrison's Gourmet Texas Bar-B-Q Rub a try

See the video and get some ideas for your business. Sorry No critiquing the actor, he is a bit rusty...

Buy the Rub.

Quick Start Keyword Checklist

2010-10-17T10:00:00.000-07:00

If you read the quick keyword action plan, and a couple of the entries before that you should've come up with a pretty simple checklist. Just in case you didn't I'll include it here.

1. Create a list of keyword phrases that have a minimum of two words and preferably four words in each phrase.

2. Filter your keyword list and look for keywords that are targeting your customer when they’re in a position or desire to buy your product or service.

3. Just in case you weren't sure in step one, eliminate all keyword phrases that are only one keyword.

4. Review your keyword list, preferably with a customer, and ask would they really use these keywords to find you when they are ready to buy?

5. Do you know what keywords potential customers are using to find competing websites or websites similar to yours?

6. Do you still remember the three keyword types? If not, Go back and read about them.

I can't emphasize enough how expensive and futile using single keywords can be. Because they cast such a broad reach the likelihood of a customer finding you is nearly nil.

Also keep in mind the people surfing the web might use common terms in place of technical terms. For instance if you are looking for a company that sells freestanding gas fireplaces, you might put in gas stoves or gas heaters or potbelly gas stoves. Instead of looking for a podiatrist you might be looking for a foot and ankle doctor. Keep all of this in mind when you are selecting your keywords and asking customers how they might find you.

Finally remember the more specific a Web surfer is when they enter a query, the more likely they are to buy. This is why a four keyword phrase can be eight or nine times more effective than a single keyword.

Quick Keyword Action Plan

2010-10-15T08:06:00.000-07:00

One of the questions I get most often when I speak to a group is the same question matter what the group is. Without fail someone will walk up to me or call me after the class or send me an e-mail that says "okay I get all that great stuff, but how do I do it?"

One of the reasons I wrote the book “So, Now What?” was the number of people asking me that same question. They would tell me that they've taken all kinds of classes, read all kinds of books and they still aren't sure what they're supposed to do. When I wrote “So, Now What?” I checklists and some worksheets right in the book to help people know exactly what to do in order to get onto the first step of a good business and a happy life.

What does this have to do with Internet marketing? Well the funny thing is I get the same question after Internet marketing classes. It doesn't matter if I teach a live class or a webinar, someone always has that question. So today I want to give you a quick action plan with some steps you can take to make sure you have the right keyword campaign for your Internet marketing. If you are still doing research for Internet marketing my very first suggestion in your first step is to get a Google ad words account. Google is at least 50% of all search marketing, and even though they're losing ground they are still the biggest and most important. Starting here will give you the best education you can get in exchange for your time.

It doesn't matter what I recommend you do or what I give you as an action plan if you don't have an account to actually get online and do it. You don't even need to give your account a big-budget. As little as one dollar a day will let you get the feedback you need. This feedback is critical to help you understand where your business fits in the world of the Internet. Knowing where you are and knowing where your customers are rank among the most critical aspects of Internet marketing. Without knowing where you are and where your customer is you cannot make a connection between the two.

Here is a quick checklist with some explanations of each step:

1. Create three ads you think are eye-catching and relevant to your business. These three ads will be adds that somebody looking for your business would see. When they see this little ad, they must know exactly what you do and why they need to go to your website to buy your service or product.

2. Come up with somewhere between 10 and 40 keywords that people would be searching with when they're looking for those ads you created in step one. Going back to previous conversations, these keywords are not really single words but phrases. For example if you sold squirrel food and feeders you would not want to just put in the word squirrel. You would want to put in keyword groups like "large squirrel feeders" or "tree squirrel automatic feeders" or "window mount squirrel feeders". You can imagine that somebody looking for a window mount squirrel feeder will not only find your website but they will be looking to buy a window mount squirrel feeder. When you put a keyword in that consists of four words, research indicates you are up to eight times more likely to reach a buyer than using a one or two word phrase.

After these two steps are complete, you will need to sit back and wait a couple of days to let Google do its magic. After your ad has run a couple of days and Google has been able to analyze your competitors, you will get some very important information about you things that will help you move on to step three.

Step three is the step that must be performed at least once a month and that is keyword analysis.

3. Keyword analysis: This means you're eliminating those keywords that have low quality scores and low click through rates. You will be replacing them with new or better keywords based on the keywords that are working and the advertising that is working. You should also take out your lowest performing ad and create a new ad every month. The lowest performing ad should be removed for each of your campaigns in order to continuously improve performance.

The month you skip step three will be the month your competitor doesn't, and you will see a significant change in performance. A little bit of extra effort can go a long way in your Internet marketing program.

Keyword Targeting For Small Business

2010-10-14T06:51:00.000-07:00

Keyword targeting can be one of those make or break disciplines when it comes to Internet marketing. The reason the keyword targeting is so critical is because search engines have the ability to follow the clicks as they say. If you create an Internet marketing program based on the wrong keywords, when customers click your website and quickly leave because you targeted the wrong keywords, the search engines take note.

For Google ad words users, one aspect of the scores is called the quality score. If your keywords are poor and aimed at the wrong market your quality score declines. The lower your quality score, the higher your cost per click. So now you have a downward spiral where your costs are going up and the people who are clicking are not your customers anyway so your sales are going down. Your website is losing position on the unpaid section (this is known as the organic search section) and your ads are increasing in cost because the quality score variable is going the wrong way. It is the double whammy of Internet search.

The opposite is also very true. If you target the right keywords to the right market and have relevant content on your website, your quality score goes up. When your quality score goes up, your cost of advertising goes down and the percentage of people that click who become customers goes up. This situation is a great example of work less and make more. This is why sometimes hiring a professional ad words manager might be worth the money. Let's say you budget $2000 per month and you have a poor campaign connecting to the wrong customers. What if you took the same $2000 it to a professional company and had three or even four times better results from your campaign? Would that be worth it?

There are some automated companies who advertise their ability to optimize keywords for your campaign. The question to ask them is “How do they get paid?” If they're getting paid strictly on a percentage of sales or a percentage of your advertising on the various search engines, then you should ask yourself what is their motivation? If they make more money when you advertise more or your advertising costs increase, that sounds like they are motivated to get you to advertise more not help you connect better.

Many small boutique shops will charge a flat rate for their efforts and a very small percentage for managing your actual advertising budget. That flat rate is what keeps them in business. Customers only pay the flat rate when they're making money, if the boutique gets lazy and customers stop calling, they will end up without customers.

When a business is small or just starting out the owner will have time to review the keywords a regular basis and we suggest at least once a month. When customers come in, make an effort to find out how they found your business. If it was through the Internet, ask them if they can recall exactly what keywords they used. If you can truly identify your perfect customer, call them and ask them how they would find your business on the Internet. Ask them to search for you when they need your service. Don't ask them to search for your company specifically ask them to search for all companies like yours and see how they do it. The insight there can be tremendously valuable. Remember the goal is to focus on the perfect customer, the rest of them will become customers because they want to be like your perfect customer. Keep your eyes on the target and you will hit it.

Focus On The Perfect Customer

2010-10-14T06:47:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite aspects of Internet marketing is the fact you have to focus. Any company that tries to market to everyone on the Internet is going to go bankrupt unless they sell something that everyone on the Internet wants to buy and will buy. Most people that will buy anything shop at Walmart. On the Internet they're looking for something in particular. The trick is to figure out how they would look for you.

One of the things that separates every business is the owner and their personality as it evolves into the business. That uniqueness is what your customer is looking for and vice versa. When you understand exactly who your customer is and I'm not talking about every customer, but your best customer, you can do a lot better with Internet marketing and all of your marketing for that matter.

For example, if you sell ski jackets, 100% of your marketing money and effort should be aimed at skiers. There will be a lot of people who buy ski jackets that don't ski. Defining those non-skiers and trying to market to them can be a critical mistake. The non-skiers look to the skiers for the fashion trend. The best marketing will be directed squarely at those skiers who create the image for the non-skier market. If the designs are youthful in nature, than the marketing will be directed at young skiers. The more narrowly defined your customer is the easier they are to reach and create a connection.

If you make designs for young skiers and they become popular among the young skiers, the young skiers will become your advertising conduit to the older skiers and the non-skiers alike. We think of social networking as being something new. It isn’t, it is the medium used in social networking that is new. Marketing has always been about finding your customer and that customer extending out your brand. Now the customers have tools that can send out messages with exponentially greater reach than telephones or mail.

Celebrity endorsements are a form of social marketing that pre-dates the internet entirely. Getting a young celebrity snowboarder like Shawn White to give a genuine endorsement of your product can be a home run. If the product doesn't live up to expectations though, word will spread and Shawn White becomes a "sell out". Tony Hawk recently said he regrets giving a company "Carte Blanche" with his name because they sold many products that he didn't believe in. Now he protects his name with 100% approval. He knows his customer and doesn't want to let them down again.

Keeping this in mind as you build an Internet marketing program you will be able to better define the keywords that you focus on for your marketing and building your business. There are three types of keywords that work best for search engines and for matching and content placed advertising. There are keywords for browsing, keywords for comparing and keywords for buying. My suggestion is that 95% of your marketing money is focused on those keywords for buying and maybe 5% on comparing if you have a broad product line. You might be better off narrowing your product line.

When you know your customer you will know what keywords they use to find and buy your product. This is just one critical piece of information you gain from the conversations with your customers and highlights why knowing the customer is so important. Your goal is to reach your perfect customer, make them happy and have fun doing it. If you truly enjoy what you do for them, they will see it, and they will enjoy being a part of it. When they enjoy being a part of it, they will go to work for you.

Focus On The Objective

2010-10-07T11:20:00.000-07:00

The other night I had the pleasure of going to the new matchsticks movie premiere party. I haven't been to a premiere since I was a little kid and my dad's friend Dwight Brooks premiered his movie. One of the things that impressed me about the matchsticks movie THE WAY I SEE IT was the producer’s connection to his audience. Every single person in there was a skier or snowboarder. No one showed up just because it was a premier. The night that I attended, the premiere had three showings and I would estimate 350 people per showing. Not a bad gig when we don’t even have snow yet.

At first it appeared a little strange that this premiere was being held in a hotel ballroom. I would expect an established production company premiering a new movie to be in a traditional movie theater. After a while I realized this was by design. Scott Gallagher and his team understood that their customer would sit on the floor or stand in the back if that's what it meant to see the movie. Sit and stand they did. As a bonus, skiers featured in the movie like Ingrid Backstrom and JT Holmes were in the back of the ballroom signing posters and magazines.

It's an amazing connection between the folks at matchstick and their customer was something worth watching and thinking about. What amazed me was how narrow the niche was. And it was clearly a good niche. When we use the Internet to connect with our customers we are connected in a couple of ways. The most important of course the referral connection which we can get through social media. You don't get that connection unless you very clearly understand who your customer is exactly.

When you're looking at your business on the Internet can you say exactly what your perfect customer would be searching for when searching for your business. For example if you sold used cars on the Internet, how broad is used cars? Every used car dealer has some slightly narrower niche if they are successful. Some focus on people with bad credit, others focus on people looking for a good deal on a sports car. Each of these give the business an opportunity to find the right customer.

The second type of connection we can make with our customer over the Internet is through search. By search I don't just mean search engines but rather the all-encompassing search. This includes search engines, affiliate networks and placed advertising based on the customer's preferences and activities at the moment they are doing it. For instance if you are the used-car guy who focuses on people with bad credit, your ad could show up every time somebody types in used cars. You'd be wasting the time of money. We try very hard to avoid one-word search keys because the probablity of reaching a customer is close to nil. Many two word phrases like used cars, are so broad that they too count as a one word search term in the world of search marketing.

For example if someone is searching and you have the keyword "cars" in your keyword list and they are searching for the movie Cars your ad will show up even though they have no interest. In the CPM (click per M views) campaign that is a wasted view. In a PPC (pay per click)campaign the person searching might click just out of curiosity but again a very thin chance that they are a potential customer at that time. So if you changed your keyword selection to the phrase "used cars" you greatly increase the probability of reaching a buyer.

Trying to connect to those “maybe later” customers is a waste of time. One of the great selling stories of our generation involved a guy at a major stock firm that hung up immediately if you didn’t say “yes”. He figured out that the time used converting “no” or on the fence person was time lost finding a “yes”. This rule applies to seach. Putting your ad in front of the wrong people at the wrong time just irritates them and wastes your money.

Using keywords like "no credit used cars" as a phrase will increase the likelihood of reaching a customer significantly. For a successful online marketing campaign you must target the right keywords. The better you know your customer and how they search the better and more narrow you can make your keyword niche. The better your keyword niche the better your website promotion efforts in the more likely you are to reach a client.

If you think about building a keyword list for your website advertising campaigns, look for three and four word phrases to use of keywords. Additionally using phrase matching will make sure that you match all of the words in your phrase not just one of the words.

When you focus on your customer and truly understand them it makes it much easier to connect. Your three word and four word phrases should also describe exactly what you do.

Stay on focus and you will connect to the right customers every time. Don't believe me, go to a matchstick movie premier. By the way, Subaru was there too, they knew this group fit the Subaru niche nicely.

Specialization Pays Off

2010-10-05T21:47:00.000-07:00

One of the most difficult conversations I have with my clients on a regular basis is about focus. As business owners, there is a mentality along the lines of "I don't just want my customers business, I want all the business." The mentality of getting "all the business" is a very dangerous path in business. Since the earliest days of commerce and civilization we have known that specialization helps grow businesses more effectively and therefore economies.

Even in the 4th Century, Plato found it worth mentioning:

All things will be produced in superior quantity and quality, and with greater ease, when each man works at a single occupation, in accordance with his natural gifts, and at the right moment, without meddling with anything else. - Plato

The internet community and most search engines support businesses and websites that are focused specialists. So now the question, what does this mean to your and your business? Lets have a look at a couple of examples.

Company A is a full service pet store.

As a full service pet store they offered grooming, pet food, supplies, a mix of domestic pets and training classes on the weekends. The owners were frazzled trying to keep up with the big brand stores with their one little shop.

The big stores can just buy their advertising and links for all of these different areas. For a single location business, there are a couple of different approaches. In this case we focused the business. A careful review of the clients accounting and interviews with customers about what they liked in the shop. The analysis clearly indicated that the shop was more productive in two areas. Grooming and pet supplies.

The owners weren't sure they could survive if they didn't sell pets and offer classes. We started by focusing the internet marketing on only those two areas. The website was cleaned up and the advertising cut to only advertising grooming services and pet supplies. The training classes were stopped at the completion of the class that was in progress. Internet profiles were built separately for the grooming and the pet supplies as if they were two dedicated businesses.

The numbers were clear, in just four weeks the stores gross sales were up 5%, net profit up 25% and most importantly the owners finally had some time off.

The internet community and the pet store's customers rewarded the more focused owners with better business and more of it.

Company B is a auto repair center.

When we first met the owner, he was working on any car, any brand and had two mechanics helping him and a part time receptionist. There were cars and parts stuffed into every corner of the shop and lined up out the door. Hours were spent researching parts and trying to find a place that had the parts in stock.

Talking with the other two mechanics, it turned out the owner was a master at repairing 1960's era Fords. He had part numbers memorized and a complete Rolodex of parts suppliers. Looking around the shop there wasn't a single 1960's Ford. The owner felt like there wasn't enough business in the area. The great thing about being a specialist is you can broaden your net.

The conversion took a little longer than the conversion of the pet store. The methods were a little different here. Using direct mail we went a little old school and found a list with all of the owners of 1961-1975 Ford's that were registered in a much wider area.

The first few customers weren't really sure when they arrived and didn't see a shop filled with Fords. The work went faster on the Fords and funny thing, the work was more profitable. Today the shop doesn't do any advertising and has a reputation that brings in restoration work from hundreds of miles away. The owner is working on the cars he wants to, and the customers are getting better work.

The next time a customer asks you do go wide and add a brand or service you don't offer, stop and think if it is really worth it. Staying focused helps you reduce your training costs, advertising costs, real estate costs and stress.

How many people do you call successful that are the "Jack of all Trades"? How many specialists to you know that are living better than you? All of those rules work for business and the internet community.

Your story on the internet is what your internet presence is all about. If your internet presence is focused and clear you are more likely to attract the business you want as a reward from the internet community. What can you do to to as Plato said and focus on your single occupation and produce more with greater ease so you can go get your rewards? Get focused, get rewards.

Leave Your Comfort Zone

2010-09-09T11:00:00.000-07:00

“One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn't do” - Henry Ford.

All throughout my life I have had the pleasure of doing things most people dream of. The part they don't realize is each of these events, was a dream once for me too. Two years ago, we shut down our business to re-think what we did. We asked the customers we had, what they liked and what we could do better for them. We analyzed everything we did, and stopped doing several things that looked profitable and turned out not to be. We placed more emphasis in other areas that were very profitable and offered a very high level of service our customers were asking for.

In October of that year, I submitted an article to my friend Jason Knott at CEPro, and got flamed in a big way when he published my outlook online. The prevailing view was that shutting down to work on the business would put most companies out of business. Clearly to me this begged the question: Why be in business? What no one knew was that we had already shut down, re-evalutated, changed staff, closed a location and moved forward. I believe we did so successfully. We weren't turning the gross numbers we did the previous year, but we were still alive after 10 years in an industry abandoned by Tweeter and Circuit City as well as a host of other smaller companies across the country. Even then it was still comfortable.

One of the personal goals my wife and I set during that rethinking period was to take a trip to the big island of Hawaii. That trip was fantastic, and gave me a chance to look at my life separate from the business. During this trip we had a chance to look forward to an entirely different economic year than we had over the last four. Once again we are re-focusing based on our best guess of next years economic climate. I also took a look at where I was in life, and where I needed to go. The obvious and easy choice would have been to return to Houston and keep moving in the same direction.

A great example of a business with the ability to adapt and change with the environment is Nokia. The Finnish cell phone maker started out many decades ago in an industry that has no relation to electronics. Over time they re-evaluated the opportunities in the market and set new targets. All I suggested in my CePro submission was that we all need to think like Nokia and change the road we are on if that road isn't going where we want to go. Myopia set in for many readers and they pretty much called me a lunatic. I wrote a book about the entire experience of rebuilding a company twice, then effectively closing it to re-create it as a new company. Jason Knott reviewed the book a few months back, it is called So, Now What?

When I say readers called me a lunatic, I think this was just their perception of my thought not fitting their comfort zone. Our view is just our perception, so it is really just how we see the world isn't it? We all color our view with our belief system and interpretation of our circumstances. In a financial class for owners at a management conference, Leslie Shiner of the Shiner Group made that point very clear.. For those of you that missed her class, the point was simple. Step back, look at what you do, why you do it, and ask is it worth it and is it really what you want to do? If you want to deliver free food to people and have no need to make money, have at it. If you need to make a profit so you can eat and your business isn't making enough or isn't making anything, regroup, find a new target and try again. There is money to be made in every economy, it is a matter of finding what you can do best to serve others in that economy.

It would be very easy and comfortable to have stayed in our stores and continued doing what we did until they died the inevitable death. Instead we stepped way out of our comfort zone and moved towards something new. Even though it was out of our comfort zone, it was within our knowledge base. By staying uncomfortable it forced us to challenge everything we were thinking and doing. Within weeks we had two new operating bases both creating value and more importantly income.

One of the keys to success is always moving forward toward a goal. It has been said, if you aren't moving toward your goals, you are moving away from them. When we become comfortable we stop growing. Look around nature, when anything stops growing, it starts dying. Do you want to grow or die? Growth and death will happen in every economy. It doesn't matter if you are an airline or internet marketer. You must adapt to the winds of change in order to keep moving and growing towards your goal. What can you focus on and move out of your comfort zone so you and your business can grow?

Why You Should Care About The Economy

2010-08-19T13:39:00.000-07:00

Sometime ago I was on a flight with a Frenchman from Paris. He turned out to be a professor of economics in Paris. The professor made some very interesting observations about the economy and world politics that got me thinking.

One of he statements was this: "One of the most difficult tasks for a government is to keep it's citizens engaged so that they are not rebelling. A government is graded on the level of crime and poverty it hosts within it's borders, and each administration should be judged by the change in crime and poverty.". I guess that The French have a different perspective on this than we do, after all they did be-head Napoleon Bonaparte.

This really hits home when you start looking at the responses to crime in Arizona. When your state is over run with crime, and the federal government does not effectively protect the borders or discourage illegal aliens from returning, why shouldn't a state do it?

To begin with, aren't services of the government reserved for citizens by law? What is wrong with requiring citizens to prove citizenship to vote or use services paid for by the citizens? I am amazed that we so easily give up our fourth amendment rights to get on an airplane, and then get mad when the some public service office asks us to prove we are citizens and eligible to use the services. Maybe Reagan and Clinton had it right with the national ID program?

In a day and age where the biggest consumer is the government, we all should recognize the problem when trying to shrink a government or its influence with a majority vote. If the majority or close to it are directly or indirectly benefitting from the spending of the government how can we ever expect the right thing to happen? Selfishness and easy survival will always trump the vote for a smaller government that might cost a job specifically Joe Voters job. Only once has the government decreased a department that I can think of, and that took a union strike followed by a presidential order locking out all of those on strike.

Every person that claims to be responsible for themselves needs to stand up and accept that the government is bloated and doesn't have any real money to pay it's employees anyway. It is time to step up and step out.

Recently a newscaster on CNN said the government should be proud it pushed through a 600 billion dollar healthcare bill. How can they be proud of spending another 600 billion dollars they don't have. This is just a continuation of the insanity where the government makes an issue out of air to pacify people. It fails every cornerstone principle the founding fathers used to create this country.

We all know that one of two things happen in basic money management. First you have to take in more money than you spend. This method leaves money for investing to make more money, money for emergencies and money to pay the taxes that run an effective government. The second method is to spend all you have and borrow more for emergencies, investments and taxes. Even if you are totally broke and borrowing for food and clothes, chances are high that you are still paying sales taxes. The obvious problem with the second method is simple, at some point the people lending you money stop giving it to you and you are bankrupt, because you have none to borrow to pay your bills. The same is true for governments.

Bernie Madoff is the villain of Wall Street, and yet our government does this every day. When are we going to hold the government accountable like we do it's people? What happened to of the people, by the people, for the people?

When the US government first started borrowing money to pay it's bills, it was supposed to be a short term plan to help get the economy going. The euphoria of not having to say "no" became the opium of politics. Now we are paying for it.

It is time to elect leaders that can say "no" and stop the madness. It is time to stop giving away the store with open borders and amnesty programs. When Mexico opens it's borders to all Americans that want to work and own property there, we can discuss the same treatment for Mexicans coming north. Until then we need to treat illegals like illegals.

There are thousands of Mexicans who have come north, obtained the right to work and thousands more that become citizens all the time. Why to we want to smear their hard work and offer amnesty at a time with double digit unemployment? Does everyone really just want to ignore the issue and hope it goes away? Do we really want to say to all of the legAl immigrants "Gee we're sorry we made you spend all that money and do all that stuff, but we really didn't mean it."? This is plain and simple laziness on the part of our politicians. They don't want to do the work and face a very small and very vocal majority. Only when we get involved will the right things happen. It is time to become vocal.

We are facing an economic tidal wave that took nearly 80 years to create. As a business owner, and senatorial candidate for CT, Peter Schiff said in his book Crash, the crash is coming, we just don't know when. He called the mortgage collapse two years before it happened. The smart attorneys became bankruptcy specialists and are now reaping in the money.

Mr. Schiff contends in Crash 2.0, the updated version of his book, that the next wave is coming. As a business owner you should understand the dangers of voting for self serving policies that expand the debt of our cities, states and of course the Federal Government.

It is our duty as leaders in our community to educate people, specifically voters, what their vote really means. We need to remind them that a government has to make more money than it spends, just like every household does. We need to grow our businesses responsibly and with a level of integrity that the country can be proud of.

So what can you do to help you community make the changes and sacrifices it needs to get on the right track? It won't be easy but it needs to be done if we are to survive the next crash.

Your thoughts please.......

Tech toys for business, the iPhone 4 story continues

2010-08-10T13:00:00.000-07:00

Now on day 45 with my iPhone 4, the BlackBerry withdrawals are getting worse. Seeing the new BlackBerry Torch on the AT&T website didn't help. You gotta hand that one to AT&T, legions of former BlackBerry users are unhappy with the iPhone 4, and they drop the early hint of the BlackBerry Torch as the rumors of the Verizon iPhone build up steam and the massive EVO launched.

Every call that drops makes my stomach turn, every appointment that I can't sent out invitations for makes my head hurt, and every time some one says they can't hear me when I am on BlueTooth makes my eyes squint.

I heard today the "Executive in charge of the iPhone has left Apple. No surprise there, the iPhone 4 is definitely not "twice the phone at half the price".

There are just four main things the iPhone missed do be a serious business tool, an they are:
1. Decent reception, the cover didn't help and the dropped calls are a headache. I've found at home if I leave the iPhone 4 in the kitchen window on the charger and only use Bluetooth it doesn't drop calls.
2. Invites for the calendar, I mean what kind of nut job doesn't send his wife an invitation to dinner. Do you know how embarrassing it is sitting at my friends restaurant waiting for my wife when she is out with the girls? Thats what happens when she doesn't get my invites. Worse is when I schedule something when she has an appointment that I was supposed to be at. It turns out that not being able to accept her invite is no excuse for not showing up. Invites kept my marriage and work life balanced and now they are gone.
3. Task sync with outlook, ToDo works ok, but it is Bluetooth sync only and requires more steps. If you are any kind of mover and shaker you are probably little too busy for that nonsense. I am sure Mr. Jobs just says "call my people and they'll put it on my calendar."
4. BlueTooth that works. I can hear everyone perfectly, when the phone is correctly placed (see #1). The issue is, I sound garbled to everyone else. This one the "geniuses" at the Apple Store deny even after I showed them dozens of complaints on the Apple forums at Apple.com

While I was in the Apple store I also asked about items 1 through 3 the Apple Genius asked if I used to have a BlackBerry. When I said yes, he suggested it would be better to go back because he didn't know of anything to correct items 1,2 and 4. He did suggest trying ToDo to correct the task sync.

Oh yeah, and how about a little better cursor placement capability while we are fixing things?

Now, in he interest of fairness, if I go to the BlackBerry Torch in a couple of weeks, there are some features of the iPhone 4 I will miss. First among them is the killer screen resolution. This little thing is really nice for viewing videos and photos. I am sure my eye strain, looking at such a small screen so close isn't getting better, but it is fun to look at.

The camera and video capabilities are pretty sweet on the iPhone 4 also. For nearly a month now my digital camera and Flip have collected dust on my desk at home. There is an annoying little bug that blacks out most of the pictures in the preview mode. I had 89 photos last night, and only could see the twenty most recent. I had to go to the slide show to see the rest. I'll live with this in exchange for the picture quality.

The thing I will miss the most is the iPod video capability. Right now I am on the road working, and I downloaded nearly four hours of home study videos and watched them on the airplane and in the airport. I got over the short battery life pretty quickly. I'll gladly trade the time wasted booting up my dual core 64 bit laptop for the time required to hunt down an outlet. Besides the little pose cord weighs a whole lot less than a HP laptop with an 8 cell battery. Don't ask me what I was thinking buying that brick for the road.

If I could just get the unlimited data plan back, I might keep both phones with AT&T. I just got my overage notice for those home study videos. Ouch.

Remember to choose your tools based on how you live, not how other people tell you to be cool.

Where you a BlackBerry user? Did you go back? Let us know why or why not, so we can all make better choices.

Cheers

Scott Bourquin