I’ve just finished my second business breakfast with BNI here in Pretoria, South Africa. Once again this is an awesome time to network and at the same time meet people with business mindsets. Everyone at the meeting has the same goal, meet new people, connect and network in such a way to build friendships and generate more business referrals.

I am confident that the weekly meetings at BNI will give me more future referrals, at the same time I will be able to return the favour as my personal network grows.

I was given an opportunity to speak to the group and test our new marketing system, cellphonemarketing.co.za The system utilizes SMS and Email marketing technology. There and then 9 people successfully tested the system.  This was just an example of how a business can integrate a direct response model with SMS and Email marketing into their offline/online marketing campaigns.  (For those that want to test it, simply sms “Demo” followed by your email address to 072 901 7508). This number will be shortened to a short code, eg 33344.

I’ve made a sort video, at the event, using my Laptop, FlipCam, and Camtasia Studio (Embedded video player). By using the same sms/email system I emailed the demo testers this view this post.

Dian Joubert

It’s quite awesome the way it’s structured. Each person got a chance to give a quick summary of their business what what they do. Then one of the members, Jaco Terreblanche (jaco@cybersmart.co.za) from PSG Konsult had a chance to give a 10 minute presentation on financial planning and the South African stock market and how they go about investing into various funds. I must admit they have an awesome track record from what I could see on their financial statements.  Jaco sends out reports on the stock portfolios of every client each month as well as newsletters about movements and changes in the financial industry.

After the presentation we all had some breakfast and I must say, the Casa Toscana is a great place to have meetings.

I’ve just looked at all the business cards I received and viewed all the websites. I must say, some of the domain names are really good and will easily be able to rank on Google to the first page!

Thanks to everyone there, hope to see you next week.

Enjoy the opening game of the soccer world cup 2010!

Dian Joubert

I just got off the phone with Google (European Union).  A thank you goes out to the staff in Dublin for providing this summary of costs for the Youtube Brand Channel.

• You must spend £25,000 within the first 3 months
• The brand channel itself is 100% free. The entire £25,000 budget is spent on advertising
• Minimum of £15,000 pounds has to be allocated to advertising on YouTube, the other £10,000 can be put towards Display and Content (AdWords)
• You are looking at a Cost Per Impression (CPM) basis
• It’s always a good starting point to have 100+ videos
• You can use DART or AdWords for the advertising (we always recommend DART for YouTube video/image ads as it guarantees the placement over a period of time). You will see your ROI’s before the client spends a single penny.
• First need to create a user channel (free), then we unlock the brand channel
• You will need to sign an agreement for the 3 month spend, once the agreement is signed we will unlock the brand channel

Here is a quick summery of the different types of ad formats you can include with your £7K spread:
Standard auto play video ad
Standard click to play video ad
Standard banner ads
Rich media ads
In-Stream ads (pre roll video ad)
In-Video ads

Mobile Marketing Interview with Antonio Eram, Founder and CEO of MobilPay

I had to get right into the trenches of Silicon Valley to get this interview! Antonio give’s a legendary interview that absolutely shocked me and will definitively open your eyes to a whole new world.

Listen to it now (22 minutes) or download it as podcast .  Should only be playable on my site

mobile-marketing-interview-podcast

Mobile World Congress speech summary.

• Mobil Computing has finally arrived, for real this time!
• 30% growth year over year
• In 3 years smartphones will overtake pc sales, if not sooner.
• Mobile web adoption is happening 8x faster than the Desktop adoption did 10 years ago.
• 50% of internet connections are for mobile devices
• There are more Google Searches on mobile than on the desktop in emerging countries like Indonesia and South Africa
• Low power high performance chips = SmartPhones
• Rate of innovation is not slowing down
• Internet connects 700 million public servers
• Governments are using Twitter
• US and Europe raises at the same time
• Faster download speeds and faster upload speeds
• Data kept in the cloud, not in the sim card anymore
• The new aps are sharing intensive, this is a whole new game. We can build interlinked systems.
• Computing wave, telecommunication wave
• The game has changed. A device that is not connected is useless. Your foundation needs to connect to everything.
• Why mobile? This is where the volume lies.
• Mobile First. Every Product is now first and foremost developed for mobile phones.
• The top programmers want to work on apps.
• Voice recognition now becomes viable due to the cloud PC’s communicating faster. “what about talking to someone in a different language and having this converted?”
• Search by voice (Streams the file to a server farm, the servers matches and calculates the words, then sends it back to the phone).
• Search by image, released September 09. Upload high quality images of your business premises and get the exact information back. (Then Google should be able to read your website pictures as words and add it into their searching algorithm – Dian Joubert)
• 65 partners, 26 devices, 59 operators in 48 countries are working in partnership with Google.
• 60,000 Nexus Smartphones being shipped per day (doubled over the last quater).
• Android (Computing, connectivity, cloud mergeing).
• This is a revolution
• Lines are blurred between desktops and mobile phones
• Mirror the desktop browsing experience onto mobile
• Flash was missing, but now it runs on android
• Tie flash into the native ability of the smartphones. Full flash
• Games are gonna be HUGE! “Imagine having a phone with better gaming capabilities than a sonyPS3!” – Dian Joubert (Quake 3 already flawlessly runs on smartphones)
• A phone is now a alter Ego, it becomes an extention of who we are. It can take pictures better than we can remember.
• Mobile first in everything!
• It’s time to have the software and networks work together.
• The new Credit Card = Mobile Phone (Tied to banking systems, payment systems)
• Google will know more about the customer when it comes to mobile, because it benefits the customer.
• 1 Trillion is spent on off-line marketing in the USA , only 10% is online. We will see n HUGE shift to online marketing.
• Physical Location Marketing is possible
• Mobile Marketing is unexplored
• Mobile data explosion! We’re seeing networks crashing because of  mobile data usage.
• Online advertising is unexploited

Remember, Sharing is Caring, Share on Facebook, Buzz and One Bookmark

I’ve posted all 3 day’s summaries on this page. If you want me to go into detail about a specific point just drop me a line in the comments section.

If you haven’t done so yet, join my site (http://dianjoubert.com) and ensure you tick the newsletter box for my blog updates.

Here’s a short Video of the event.

Day 1 Summary of Armand Morin’s Internet Marketing Seminar – Los Angeles

The game has changed! The USP (Unique Selling Proposition) was created in 1961. Old out dated products are being sold today. If you focus on a Quality virtual product then you’re on the road to success.

The secret today is to give a away something for free. What you want to get here is a small commitment. Remember, commitment = conversions.

Sequential Marketing (As you can see from the first 4 steps, you’re building a relationship with your clients).

1. Website
2. Build your client base
3. Advertise
4. Build a following
5. Create a product
6. Create a separate website with a product
7. Sale

The easiest way to build that relationship is by keeping in touch and giving value. This is where your newsletter comes in.

People that join your newsletter ‘look up’ to you, they want information from you and if they stay, they like you.

Build a FRESH CLIENT BASE.

1. Build up your own database organically. It does not help you stealing from others. The database/client/list is your number one priority.

2. Build a consistent newsletter and make it clear that you will deliver your newsletter every day/week/month. Make sure you keep up to expectations. Remember, people that join your newsletter look up to you or your business. they’re following you. Give them what they deserve.

3. Don’t dilute your database (list) with other people. Your list should be sacred. The people that connect with you or your business are your connections. Should you want to do a Joint Venture (JV) with anyone you need to be 100% sure you want to do it, trust them and should be willing to back their product or service.

4. People expect to get stuff for free (Free = Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc). So never neglect the power of Free. (Free newsletter, free ebook, etc…)

5. Why not publish your own magazine and ask others in your niche to write monthly columns for that magazine?

6. If you can answer 2 of the following questions then you’re 90% there.

• How does this compare to the other options
• How does this compare to doing nothing at all

7. There’s a 10 point structure for a powerpoint sales “letter” (Ask me in the comments if you want to know more about this).

8. Local search dominates 30% of search queries. Think Google Maps. Location Marketing, etc…
If you want me to go in-depth in to any of the above just ask me in the comments section

Day 2 Summary of Armand Morin’s Internet Marketing Seminar – Los Angeles

Email Copywriting

Before you start off, ask yourself “what do you want them to do?”

1. First off, people need to actually read your emails.
2. You need to get your prospects/clients into the habit of clicking your link.
3. Your email needs to be consistent.
4. Communicate regularly (Let them know before hand how often you will contact them).
5. Content is important but building a relationship is more important.
6. Ensure your subject line creates curiosity.

There are 3 parts to a email newsletter.

1. Identity (Who are you? Why you’re writing them?)
2. Body (Main purpose, Keep short, sell the “click” to your site, less than 100 words)
3. Close (keep it simple and consistent. “Best Regards, Dian Joubert”)

Follow the rules of Visa/Mastercard. You do not want to get your merchant account blacklisted.

When you’re building a client database, there is a huge difference between a ‘free’ email list and a high value list built with people that actually bought something from your business. Building a list with people’s credit cards is key to a highly targeted list.

Being seen as an authority in the market place is important. The more credibility and authority you have the easier it becomes to sell yourself and build your business.


Day 3 Summary of Armand Morin’s Internet Marketing Seminar – Los Angeles

The first session was for me the most important. Armand talked about the importance of never revealing your ultimate strategy of how you get your clients to buy from you. Never reveal your hand to your clients.

We then moved on to talking about doing the opposite as to what the market does with regards to pricing services or products. Armand calls this the YTY action. When Their price is low then you need to make Your price high, once the market catches up to you and moves their price higher, drop yours. So effectively the market keeps on playing catch up to you forever which makes you the market leader.

When you market a product or service you should always be able to say “My company is the ONLY company in the World that does xxxxxxxx”.

Moving onto the leapfrog method. Research your market place. Why would they buy? Why don’t they buy? Then create a product / service that has everything and your own extra that makes you the market leader immediately. Basically combine their and your solutions.

Remember that the market always dictates why they want. That’s why we need to run split tests. We need to truly understand what the market wants.

The rest of the day consisted of talking about Google and Microsof Ads.

Over the next few weeks I’m going to make my own examples with more in-depth articles on everything I’ve mentioned here. Make sure you Joined my site (http://dianjoubert.com) via my Gadget and ticked the newsletter box to get updates.

You enjoyed the post… Sharing is caring

1. All the spam followers on Buzz
2. All the Twitter spam on Buzz

Please DO NOT link your Twitter account with your Buzz account. If you send out automated updates from twitter this is regarded as spam. No wonder people can’t keep up to date with what’s going on in their Buzz account. The problem isn’t Google, the problem is that people follow spammers. Why blame Google?

Note that people don’t even know their spamming others. They just go linktastic and link to anything they can find in order to automate everything they do without regard to the outcome.

Don’t follow someone before you’ve checked out their Buzz history. Just go to their Google Profile and have a look at what they’re posting before you follow them. Do you really want to read their Buzz posts?

I have unfollowed Gary VeynerChuck, Mashable, Tim O’reilly because they had too much content making it’s way into my Buzz inbox. The problem is that people are used to using Twitter and the problem with Twitter is that people are into the habit of spamming.

From the screenshot below you can see what it looks like if someone sends their tweets directly to Buzz.



How do you know someone is a spammer? Well look at the proportion of following and followers. If it look’s like this you definitely do not want to follow them. Edwin is following 1600+ people. Do you think Edwin will ever find out that I’m Buzzing about him even though he follows me?

I totally refuse to give up my Gmail account as a spamfest! I will not allow spammers to enter here. Gmail is my safehaven, this is where I keep my passwords and secrets. This is where I do business and personal discussions. (Adwords, Analytics, Google Checkout – Banking, IP, etc). Email is where we have our last line of defence, period.

Here’s the good news. Gmail, Buzz and your documents is managed by https, this is a Secure Socket Layer. The only way to give access to an outsider is by giving them the password:

Entering your password into a 3rd party password captcha site. If you happen to miss the “https://google.com/whatever” part, it might be a password captcha form that you’re unaware of, if you actually miss this, you’ll be in for the ride of your life. Don’t enter your password into third party sites, just out of principle.

To that end. If someone follows you on Buzz, don’t follow them back unless you’ve checked out their profile, espcially what they buzz about.

We’re all publishers, most people just don’t realise it.

This makes Buzz a 100% social search engine. What if they could aggregate all the public Buzz into one easy to search portal? I’m sure they will do this soon.

Bottom line. If you want to rank for Buzz. Create a very targeted Buzz post that encourages “commenting” and “likes”. Keep it going and wait for the search feature to be released. (that is the next logical step).

UPDATE ON THIS POST:

Ok so it’s been just under 2 months since I wrote this post. There is now a dedicated Buzz search engine available. It’s called Buzzzy. Check it out: http://buzzzy.com

Unlike Twitter, Google Buzz won’t restrict the size of your message to 140 characters.

You can be rest assured that Google Buzz will not become a spam fest. However, this is down to the user. Don’t follow spammers. Simple.

One more thing, DO NOT LINK your Twitter account with your Buzz. People will not appreciate you spamming buzz with twitter updates.

Advantages

• Share privately or publicly
• Hide your Buzz followers and following
• Inbox Integration (ensure  you follow an important post)
• Ability to import sites and other social networks
• Updates in real time
• Easily Integrate with your phone
• HTTPS secure networking.
• No worry that your account will get hacked.

Google Buzz is integrated with Gmail, his is probably the most secure Social Network service on the planet.

Will you use Google Buzz for your business?