Lets have a recap. You got an overview of strategic marketing is in part 1 of this series  and you also learned that you will fail without a marketing plan. After that you got all excited about developing your plan so you decided to proceed and read about picking your business model, budget and niche in part 2 (where to start). Warning: Do not proceed without fully accomplishing part 2! All of your marketing decisions will be partially based on the foundation of how your business is structured, how much cash you can spend and what niche you are in. Recap over….

Who are you? Why should I pay attention to you? What can you do for me? I can’t trust you can I?  What?!? Where am I? My life is valuable I don’t want to waste it on useless things! This article looks interesting…ZZZZZzzzzzzz…I guess I was wrong *clicks back button*

These are all thoughts that your customers have. You can think of them like a giant biological gold miner’s sift, ya’ know like the one they used in rivers during the gold rush. The problem is that the sift doesn’t always work perfectly and lets much of the potentially valuable information slip through. Only if a big piece of shiny gold or a huge sparkling diamond gets plopped right in front of their face they’ll take action and seize an opportunity.

No matter what business you are in you have to pimp smack your customers across the face with superlative value that exceeds all anxiety, fear, and objections. You must make yourself a diamond in the rough.

This is the part of marketing that has the steepest mountains and highest fences. This is the most important step out of your whole marketing plan. You can also have the most fun on this step too.

Now get out your thinking cap and a big supply of creativity pills, you’re gonna’ need some creative juices flowing.

Positioning yourself as a source of value comes in three phases:

1. Brainstorming

2. Research

3. Chopping Wood

Before we dive in, what do we hope to accomplish? In part, that depends on our business model. In general though, with this step we want to make ourselves unique and stand out from the crowd in a valuable way. Keep this in mind as we go through the three phases.

Brainstorming

What image comes to your mind when you hear the word storm? Thunder crashing? Lightning flashing? Torrential downpour? Fierce wind blowing your umbrella inside out? That’s exactly what your brainstorming should be like. If your brainstorm is calm and collected then you’ll be missing out on some of your most innovative and valuable ideas. What I do is write down everything I think of revolving around a concept or question giving no thought to whether or not the idea is good. I time my self for a minimum of 5 minutes, most times longer. After I thunder my ideas down, I frantically read them over jotting down additional thoughts and crossing out the stupid or unintelligible parts. Once I get a good page or two filled up of these ideas then I go to the phase 2. Some questions that can help you brainstorm on how to position your value are these:

What is my businesses mission? Why should anyone pay attention to me? What does my ideal customer want, feel and think? What motivates them? What does my business have that others don’t? What do I do better than other businesses? What do people expect from my industry? What do they not expect? What does my audience want to hear? What feed back has my business or businesses like mine received? What would I expect from a business like mine? What would impress me coming from a business like mine? What problems do people need fixed in my niche? Where do people go online for information about my niche? Why?

Do not nit pick or think about these things too deeply in the brainstorm phase. Your brain will go into information overload and freeze up if you do that. The storm gets everything down on paper for phase 2. Oh, and most important of all, have fun! If you’re not having fun then you should stop and have another go when you’re in a better mood.

Market Research

Now that you have a bunch of ideas on how to make yourself unique and valuable we have to get our hands dirty and set out to gain a deeper understanding of our niche and competition. Research businesses similar to yours. How are they run? Why do people frequent them? What do people like about them? Don’t like? What advertising are they doing? What does their website say? Then research their customers. What are the customers problems? Why are they looking to buy a solution to something? What value are they looking for?

I know, this sounds like hard work….well, it is! There is a whole industry devoted to market research! But it’s not to hard with the internet. Check out this market research tutorial HERE*.

The goal for this phase is to determine potential angles or spins on problems that haven’t already been addressed in your niche. You can also learn from the way your competitors position themselves as a source of value.

Try to get a feel for what the average business in your niche is doing and then have a brainstorm on how to do it in a way that is better, more accessible, more appealing, and suites people better. For example, washing machines. If you can make a washing machine with more features and benefits, that lasts longer, comes with a better warranty, superior customer service , all at a better price, then you’ll be able to pimp slap that value right into your customer’s frontal cortex. In response the wallet will open and monies will start flying your direction.

The market research phase helps you get even more ideas and helps you to refine the idea’s you got from the brainstorm phase. The more ideas you have down on paper the better. Separate your ideas into related groups in preparation for phase 3.

Chopping Wood (narrowing scope)

Bam! Splinters are flying, wood chips are littering the floor, and the ax is making big ideas smaller and more specific. If you don’t get my little metaphor, I’ll give you a simile: your ideas are like logs, they can provide value (fire) only if they are cut small enough to fit into the fireplace (your customer’s lazy brain).

Now if you still don’t get it you lazy brained reader, valuable things that your business delivers must be super easy to understand by your customers. They have to be unique, extremely specific and convey exactly what your customer wants.

Some people call this your “elevator pitch” or “unique value proposition” but I don’t like those terms because they kind of denote that you can only have one. While I agree that you need a short one liner to describe your business, you can still have multiple “Value Statements” that all figure into your business. For bloggers, each and every post headline you write is a value statement. It tells your reader what benefit they’ll get by reading your article in a unique and interesting way. Read more about value statements HERE*.

So, once you figure out some ways to position yourself as a source of value, research them and refine them, you must chop them into bite sized and immediately understandable pieces. Check out some real world examples HERE*.

Audience

Now that you have a bunch of ideas and a few value statements, unfortunately, there is still more brainstorming, research, and chopping wood that you have to do. You really absolutely without a doubt have to figure out who your audience is.

Quickly, an audience is any group of people who might be interested in the value that your business provides.

Now brainstorm on things like:

Who would find my service/product/blog valuable? An 80 year old male historian probably wouldn’t be interested in buying an e-book about how to meet Justin Beiber in real life. (hey, ya never know)

Who is my ideal customer that is just itching to hand me their money?

What are the different groups of people who would find my value statements interesting? Value statement: “Cure your high blood pressure cheaply and naturally.”  Groups that may be interested: anybody with high blood pressure, women with it, men with it, people interested in saving money, interested in natural food…etc. The sky is the limit.

I think that should be enough to get you thinking like an experienced marketer. Just go with the flow.

Then, of course, see what you can do about researching your different groups. Find out as much as you can about them. Read their social network profiles, dating profiles, blogs, twitter, and post on message boards/ forums. Find out what magazines, newspapers, blogs, and other websites they read. What do they view as valuable. The goal is to find out what is motivating them to view something more valuable over something else. In addition, you want to find out ways that you can connect with them.

Finally try to chop them into even smaller groups. i.e Stay at home mothers under 25 who are overweight, interested in cheap and natural ways to help their mate cope with his back pain.

Now that you’ve figured out all these groups, you can go back and brainstorm more value statements that are specific to each group with the goal in mind to figure out ways to appeal more to each group’s motivation. Tapping into a person’s core motivation is what will make you successful. But we’ll talk more about that in the next lesson HERE*

PS. All of your future marketing decisions will be based on what your value statements are and who your audience is.

Summary: Brainstorm why you are unique and valuable, research competition and more ways to be valuable and unique, chop those ideas into digestible and straight to the point statements (aka value statements). Then based on your value statements brainstorm research and segment an audience.

*Sometimes when I am writing an article I get an idea that needs more detail so I put the placeholder “HERE*” where I’ll put a link to an article that I have yet to write about the subject.

The guys over a Tecca had this to say, and I agree especially about the part about G+:

Historically, Facebook has faced criticism for its opaque and often convoluted privacy policies. It may have taken the looming threat of Google+ on its turf to light a fire under the social giant, but Facebook is handing users the reins in a big way. In a series of updates that began popping up last month, the company is moving toward a model of selective sharing: rather than mass broadcasts, you can choose who you share with — because your great aunt doesn’t necessarily need to know what happened after the fifth drink at Happy Hour, does she? -full article here

What do you guys think about the new updates? Is Facebook gonna totally keep the market share? What does this mean for small business?

As I’m sure you have gathered from the title I have become a Comment Luv convert as well as a do-follow blog! What this means for you is that you can get free links on this website by making engaging comments on this blog. The old me would never get involved in something “silly” like do-follow links for my comment section. But I have come to the revelation that with the proper Anti-Spam weaponry and diligent upkeep of the comments  I’ve got absolutely nothing to loose. In fact, it actually give great value to both you and me!

How You benefit from comment luv enabled blogs?

You can get links and traffic and brand awareness. By adding a good comment on my blog you get links. When visitors on my site read your comment and think its funny, smart, or whatever they’ll visit your blog!  It’s super important to write good titles for your blog posts if you are using comment luv. So, people will discover your brand, and notice your name if you are commenting on everyone’s favorite blogs.

How do I benefit from Comment luv on my blog?

These benefits aren’t so well defined for a new blogger or internet noOb, because there isn’t a direct way for you to increase revenues. But through my research I’ve determined that I’ve got nothing to loose by adding do-follow comment love and getting comments on my blog ads value and content to may pages. More people will comment in a way that benefits them (see above) and in a way that I can respond to them! This builds conversations that lead to relationships that lead to partnerships. So what do you think about this value, is it worth it?

Fighting SPAM.

The big Con that everyone thinks about is that by making their blog do-follow it’ll attract a ton of spam. After all everybody gets spammed even when their blog isn’t a do-follow blog. We just have to fight the spam with different plugins! Along with Coment Luv I installed a light weight plugin called GASP or Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin So far the only spam that has gotten through is track-backs and it has a option to block track back spam too. As long as we stay diligent in fighting spam we’ll all build a better industry and community online.

Bottom line

Go download comment luv and GASP for your wordpress blog. You’ve got nothing to loose!

SEO

http://www.seowizz.net/2009/03/seo-tutorials.html

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-beginners-checklist-for-small-business-seo

WordPress

http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress#Famous_5-Minute_Install

http://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-seo/

Website hosting

Make my own tutorial.

Writing

Anylitics

Adsense

You Tube

adknowlege

Lead impact

Peer fly

Tracking202

Their business model. It was inherently flawed and absolutely backwards. They were relying on investors to fund them until the company’s sales caught up to its expenses. Not to mention their site, Boo.com, totally sucked! It was designed to be a fancy shopping assistant but it took over 5 minutes to load!!! In addition, that had a vast network of distribution points and clothing suppliers.

In essence, it was just too much for the management to handle. Don’t want meet your demise like Boo.com did? That’s why I’m writing this article; so that you can skip the crash and burn stages of your business. Here are some business models that are working brilliantly right now. I also happen to like these kinds of business models because they are easily accessible and bring in the green.

Blogging

Blogging is not really an end all business model in itself, but rather it’s a golden ticket to good business and is a staple in todays best practices no matter what niche you’re in. Most if not all of the fastest growing companies are leveraging their blogs in a way that delivers value, imparts trust, and gains loyal customers.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing has got to be the simplest and single most effective business model ever invented. Paired with blogging, it’s like pairing a hot dog with a bun. I would say that almost every large business with an online presence is running an affiliate program.

Cost Per Action

What’s even easier that affiliate marketing? CPA marketing! Getting someone to take an action that doesn’t involve making a purchase is like slicing butter with a warm knife. Billions are spent every year on CPA offers, why not get your piece of the pie.

Outsourcing

I’m a firm believer in specialization. read about it HEAR. If you outsource everything you’re not good at your productivity (and profits) goes through the roof! One person alone doesn’t run google…no business is an island!

Branding

What’s better than getting people to buy stuff from you? Not getting them to by from you….Letting them want to buy from you no matter what you say! Building a powerful brand is the only way to build a long term sustainable business that you can rely on for years to come. I know you bought something because of the brand at least once in your life. Think McDonnell’s vs. Wendy’s.

If your business model doesn’t include the components listed above you might not fail…but you certainly are making life hard on yourself. These are the business models that I like and when they are all mashed up you’ll build one helluv’a business.

I hear this word everywhere…everyone says you need to find a niche, research niches, dominate niches, make new niches, etc. But what does this really mean?

There are 3 definitions of niche that are applicable to our business.

The one that is most talked about is niche: “a distinct segment of a market.” What this means is that there are different parts within different markets that are different from each other. For example in the health market two different segments are bodybuilding and home remedies. These are niches. But it can get more niche than that. Two niches in bodybuilding are “getting a six pack” and “building broader shoulders.” We can even segment a market down to the geographic region and even down to the keyword.

Why shouldn’t you go for the whole market itself?!? It would be awesome to do that wouldn’t it? The fact of the matter is: its not practical to do that. You would have to beat your competition in so many freakin’ areas that your resources would be stretched thin(like the US military). Somebody spending all of their time and resources in one niche would win(like Al Qaeda). End of story. That’s not to say it can’t be done, but you don’t see Google trying to take over Gucci’s business.

The most basic rules of choosing a viable niche to build a business around are:

Evergreen Niche:

This means that the niche isn’t a fad or would quickly fade out of existence. Niches in the financial and health markets are usually pretty evergreen. Some fat person will always want to loose weight.

Low Competition Niche:

The lower the competition the easier it will for you to take over the competition.

Commercial Value niche:

If nobody plans on buying anything how do you expect to make any money? A good example of this is the movie trailer niche. Lots of people want to watch movie trailers, but nobody will pay to do it.

Niche with Demand:

If nobody is interested in what you have to offer than you should go back to your 9-5 job. Seriously the average paying internet consumer does not care about the Popsicle stick house that your little son or daughter just made.

These are just some general rules. You know as well as I do, rules are meant to be broken, so if there is an area that you think you can succeed in, don’t hold back just because some pundit (like me) tells you that you can’t go after a highly competitive niche. You’ll just have to be highly competitive.

Niche definition #2

This brings me to the next definition of niche and the less used version of it: “a place or position that is suitable or appropriate for a person or thing: to find one’s niche in the business world.” This applies directly to you. If you can’t find a place or that is suitable for you or if you can find a position that is appropriate for you no matter what market segment you are in you will fail miserably.

While the previous definition of niche talks about external attributes about your customers and audience, this definition is personal and speaks to your internal attributes. What are your strengths? Weaknesses? Skills? Passions? These are questions that must be answered while choosing a niche. If you hate babies, I don’t think starting a baby picture business is a good niche (in terms of both definitions) for you. Personally I’ve struggled with this end of choosing a niche because my passions are either not commercially viable, or they are very vague and unassuming.

I’ve found that starting with figuring out what you want to devote the next 10 years of your life to is a good place to start. Try to narrow down what it is you want to do and focus on that. Pinpointing this will be your ticket to success. Whatever you decide, it doesn’t have to be a perfect match or even a good one. Nothing is etched in stone (except some ancient artifacts and cave man paintings).

Niche definition #3

The last definition of niche  is used as an adjective. “Pertaining to or intended for a market niche; having specific appeal: niche advertising.”

This is similar to the first definition, but the idea we can get from this is that if we try to appeal to everybody we won’t be focusing on a niche. What ever business you have must have specific appeal, You can read more about creating specific appeal HERE*. For example a commercial cleaning company that appeals to anyone who needs cleaning can really be called niche. But a company that appeals to large department stores that need daily cleaning is way niche. They are very specific.

If you need help with this you must dream up who your perfect customer or audience is. Find more HERE*.  Once you get you dream customer in mind than you’ll be able to find your niche both in your market and for yourself.

Here is a picture of the secret 4th definition of niche:

*Sometimes when I am writing an article I get an idea that needs more detail so I put the placeholder “HERE*” where I’ll put a link to an article that I have yet to write about the subject.

So how do you keep focused on your current task and master one specific way to make money on line?  One way is to seal yourself in a room and don’t do anything else until you master a technique. This “room” is imaginary. Research everything there is to know about one thing, then, once you know what to do, don’t do anything else until you accomplish your goal. If you see yourself start drifting, take a break from the computer. In the mean time don’t research anything or look up better ways to do what you are doing. You already did all your research remember. Any more research will just distract you and waste time.

Stay on focus with a Micro-Task List

Another way to stay focused is to make a list of things you have to do during your day. I usually make this list in the morning over a cup of tea. (Yes, I drink tea, so should you!) Then once you have your list, put it right next to your computer on your desk where you can see it. Make sure its visible no matter what activity you are doing on the computer. Now here is the hardest part: do something on your list and don’t stop doing it until you can truthfully cross it out. Just a quick note on what to put on your list; don’t put unrealistic goals on your list, put small tasks like “write an article for my blog”. Don’t write down things like “make a million dollars” or “Learn Chinese” on your list.

The point of the list is there so you don’t have to think about what to do next. You just see it on your list, do the task, then cross it off your list. Simple. Just take action. Otherwise you will be distracted  into oblivion.

If you get wishy washy or become a flip-flopper then you will be paralyzed and so will your business. You’ll just go back to your 9-5 job and then you can just get comfortable there letting your boss make decisions for you. That’s the nice thing about a job. It doesn’t matter if the tasks you are assigned to do actually help the business, you work for someone else. You don’t worry about making the right choices or doing the best you can. You just do the minimum to avoid getting fired.

But we know that is no way to live; in pointless mediocrity. Read why I quit my day job. So, if you don’t have a boss breathing down your neck, you better learn to focus or else you may never reach your goals. Then you’ll have to go back to your job and have your boss on your butt again. DO or DIE! (more or less)

No matter how long you’ve been in internet marketing, you will never be able to master every way there is to make money online. There are tons! And to top it off, there are new ways of generating income online created every day.

“How can I choose which business model is best for me?” You may ask. Well before you jump in head first into a new method you better do research. No good comes from quick and uneducated decisions. You must examine your motivations, goals and abilities before you choose your business model.

If you already know why you want to do internet marketing and have already figured out your abilities then I’ll save you about a year of your life in the next 5 minutes. I’ve researched and tried many methods for hours on end only to find that there is no “silver bullet” but instead there’s only a “golden tank”. Slow, heavy, hard to move, breaks down often, but when it’s working it pays off big time. Of course this “golden tank” is…you! Only you hold the key to the success of your business. But now for the information that you need to pick a successful business model that works for you.

I’ll list the multitude of Online Business models with a short description:

• E-commerce: Online Retail.
• Auction Sites: Selling stuff at Auction
• Services: Selling real would services online i.e carpet cleaning, consulting
• Online services: selling services that can be completed online i.e. link building, article writing.
• Online service Reselling: selling services that you in turn contract out to other sellers for a profit.
• Drop-shipping: selling goods that get shipped directly to the consumer from the source. You act as the middle-man.
• Information Products: Creating Information products i.e. e-books
• Cost- Per- Action (CPA): You get paid for every action taken i.e lead generation. Or you pay for leads for your business.
• Incentive CPA: Consumer completes and action because of an incentive.
• Affiliate programs: You send traffic to your affiliate and you get paid when they complete an action. Or You get a bunch of affiliates to drive traffic to your own product.
• Free Trials: You get paid when consumer completes a free trial.
• Zip Submits: You get paid when consumer enters their zip code
• Content Unlock: You get paid when Consumer fills out a survey to unlock the content on your website.
• Adsense Ads: You get Income for every click on your ad or for every 1000 impressions.
• Banner Ads: You get Income for every click on your ad or for every 1000 impressions.
• Pop-up Ads: You get Income for every 1000th impressions.
• Intermediate Ads: You get Income for every 1000th impressions.
• In Text Ads: You get Income for every click on your ad
• Text Link Ads: You get Income for every click on your ad
• Premium membership Sites: Consumer pays to be a member of your site.
• Subscriptions: Consumer subscribes to your list and lets you sell stuff to them.
• Mobile Marketing: Long story short, you get paid when consumer does stuff on their mobile phone.
• Apps: Iphone, droid etc. apps generate income from sales and advertising.
• Pay-per- Call: Self explanatory.
• Arts and crafts selling: Self explanatory.
• Import/Export: Importing goods from foreign online markets and reselling them.
• Liquidation: wholesale goods.
• Forums: running an online message board or forum generation of income from advertising.
• Blogging: Generates income from Advertising.

And these are just a few. I have experience in all of these and I’ve found that some are harder than others when you are first starting out. I know this is all very overwhelming.

Each one of these models has it’s pro’s and cons but the best part is none of them require technical knowledge! Click on each one to find out how any average person can succeed with the model. Also find out what the pros and cons are, and what I think about each method.

“But I don’t have that kind of time!” you say. In that case, you’ll definitely want to set a budget for yourself. In internet marketing, bigger is better! The bigger your budget the more you can outsource your work to experts and the faster you’ll be able to learn new methods and become an expert yourself. The reason hiring experts is so important is because of an economic concept called specialization.

Specialization allows you to get the most out of your time, money, and hard work. This is because you’ll never waste your time doing something that you are not very good at, you won’t make mistakes, and you’ll have fun doing what you’re doing.

Let’s examine some real life scenarios. You are working in all areas of your business; your service, web design, coding, writing ads, accounting etc.You probably suck at at least one of those things. Even if you manage to get that task accomplished, you might make mistakes and it will take you 2 or 3 days to finish. Now if you got some one who specializes in that task they would do it right and get it done in 2 or 3 hours. You might save some money if you do it yourself, but in the long run you just won’t be as productive as your competition. Consider this illustration: You go to the doctor and he say’s you need open heart surgery. He gives you the option of reading up on how to do open heart surgery yourself for free, and sending you home with a “get well soon” card, or referring you to an experienced surgeon with a good track record. The choice is obvious.

If you want to make a real living off of the internet you will need a minimum budget for basic Web Hosting (affiliate link)and Domains(affiliate link). If you clicked the links you would see that its very inexpensive. (I use 1&1 hosting and I’m pretty happy with them, but I would recommend name cheap for domains.)

Then aside from that I also recommend that you have at least a $100 monthly budget to hire virtual assistants to do some SEO and other technical stuff. Anything left over after you hire them you can experiment with advertising.

That’s also assuming that you know what to do and who to hire, so having 50-100 budget for education is important too. Buying a few information products every month and then studying them works very well. A book that helped me was The 4-Hour Workweek(affiliate link)
.

Having an extra budget set aside exclusively for advertising would be great if you can manage it. This will allow you to start seeing results ASAP (see my article on Advertising HERE*). A warning about advertising, it’s easy to spend $150 a day with certain kinds of advertising, so you want to learn how to use your weapon before jumping onto the battlefield.

If you can spare $300-400 a month that is plenty of cash to start up your online business. But even if you have only 50$ to spend you can still run a profitable, successful website. For example, last month, I spent around $10 to keep one of my sites running and that site made over $1,000.

Aside from money It’s also important to budget your time! Don’t forget to spend time with yourself, or else you might quite or loose focus. Read my article on how to keep focus.

Instead of spending money on setting up a website maybe you should consider buying an already successful website HERE* ! That’s a whole different story… see you next time.

Summary:

You must set a budget of at least $5-10 a month, but bigger is better. Around $100 per month for outsourcing, around $100 per month for education, and around $300 for advertising is a good place to start for a budget. Total: $500-$600 (but you can make it by on less).

*Sometimes when I am writing an article I get an idea that needs more detail so I put the placeholder “HERE*” where I’ll put a link to an article that I have yet to write about the subject.

If you are struggling with a bit of motivation or if you are loosing sight of why you got yourself into the particular field or industry that you are in, read the post. here’s a quote

“That’s why it’s so important to focus your deliberate practice on doing something that you love. Think about it.”

This is an essential reminder of who we are at the core. I just pulled an all nighter (much to the dissent of my loving wife) and I was overwhelming myself with questions about if I can produce better content than other bloggers and if I can actually build up my self as an expert within the competitive niche of Internet marketing.

You can see that I lost sight of reason I’m interested in IM in the first place! I love business and marketing! So even If I never generate traction it doesn’t really matter because I’m getting better at what I love. Of course It would be nice if I did end up with a well established business at the end of 10 years.

I just want to pay my bills so I can have enough time to focus on the more important things in life.

The Question is, are you doing something you absolutely love? All business people should consider that question. If you’re not, than you might as well go shoot up some heroin (just kidding). Because, If after five years of doing something you DON’T love you get burned out, and then you don’t even have the 10,000 hours you need to be really good at something.

I’m happy they figured out that 10,000 hour rule. You should be too. What I’m really interested in is Performance marketing, Optimization, SEO, copywriting, advertising, and consulting. I think It would be awesome If I could try out some of my other website ideas when I get the cash.

Oh,  gosh, I’ve just written this whole article about myself. Well, I hope you’ve gotten some kind of Information from it that you find useful.