Besides literally being allergic to more foods than not, my daughter is a highly finicky eater. In the course of trying to get her to eat the foods she can safely eat, I’ve made an interesting observation.

It’s not so much the food itself she’s opposed to, but the presentation.

Those peas that are sitting there ignored on the high chair tray? Put them in a bowl and they get gobbled up.

Won’t touch small bite-size pieces of carrots? Cut up some carrots lengthwise instead and they’ll get downed instantly.

Rejecting the applesauce I try to feed her? Put a spoon in her hand and she readily opens up her mouth and finishes applesauce down to the last drop.

Same food. Different presentation. Completely different result.

Your marketing efforts are no different.

If you’re having trouble selling your product or service, the reason may not be the product or service itself. It could very well be your presentation.

If long sales copy isn’t effective in selling your product, try breaking it up and delivering it in a series of emails. Or use videos instead of text.

If you’re not getting any takers on your eBook, maybe converting it into a audio course will do the trick.

If no one is signing up for your membership site, try breaking the material into smaller chunks and selling them as stand alone products.

Technology makes it faster and easier to try out different ways of packaging and presenting products and services to your prospects. So if what you’re doing isn’t working, try changing the way your presenting it and see if that can boost your sales.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go figure out a way to make broccoli appetizing to a 16 month old!

When I posted my story about how I out-SEO’d the local SEO firms, I was #2 for the search term “St. Louis online marketing” and #1 for both “St. Louis Internet marketing” and “St. Louis marketing” in the Google 10-Pack.

Then, just 2 days later, I was #6 for “St. Louis online marketing” and not even on the first page for the other two terms.

Why?

I don’t know.

Maybe Google changed their algorithm for the local search rankings.

Maybe a ticked off competitor reported my listing to Google because they didn’t like me using the keyword “Internet marketing” in front of my company name.

Or maybe there’s some other reason that triggered this fall from grace.

In any case, it was fun while it lasted.

And, more importantly, getting “slapped” by Google for whatever reason gave me a reminder of why I chose to focus on PPC instead of SEO in the first place.

Here’s the deal folks.

If your business and/or business’ online marketing efforts relies on free traffic, you don’t have a business. You have a mirage.

Why?

Well, what happens when the traffic stops? (And I say “when” not “if” because it’s gonna happen.)

It could happen because Google changes their algorithm.

It could happen because the competition gets better at SEO than you.

It could happen because you (or your SEO firm) get lazy once you get that coveted first page ranking which causes you to tumble in the rankings.

But whatever the reason, if all you’re doing is relying on free traffic, the effect is devastating. In fact, here’s a story of a local business who fell off the first page of Google and ended up going out of business.

If you know, however, that you can profitably pay for traffic to your website, it’s a whole ‘nother ballgame.

Because you know you can always buy more traffic. If traffic from one source dries up for whatever reason, you can buy it from somewhere else.

When you rely on “free” traffic, however, you just can’t turn the traffic faucet on that quickly.

One of the main reasons I was drawn to Google AdWords (pay per click advertising) in the first place is control.

You simply have more control over your advertising efforts when you pay for them. If you know you can pay $1 in advertising and get $1.01 or $2 or $10 in return, you are in control.

Then your business’ success is not determined by Google or anyone else. Because you can always buy more traffic. From Google. From Yahoo!. From MSN. From web sites. From blogs. Even from offline mediums.

When you know you can convert traffic into sales, you’ve got yourself a solid online marketing plan for your business and have firmly put yourself in control of your business’ success.

Listen, I know how appealing the thought of free traffic is. Especially for a small business. Especially in times like these.

But there are no guarantees with free traffic. You can spend months and months and pay an SEO specialist $1000s of dollars to try to get your business ranked #1 for your chosen keywords.

But you may never get there.

And even if you do get there, one little algorithm tweak by Google can send you spiraling back to oblivion.

To me, that’s an incredibly risky strategy.

Now my point here is not to say SEO isn’t important. It is, and will remain an essential part of any online marketing campaign.

But if it’s all you rely on and if you don’t first prove that you can profitably buy traffic and can turn that traffic faucet on at will, you’re putting your business in a very dangerous position.

Just one last point here. And it’s about diversity in marketing.

If  I was relying solely on Google Local Search for traffic and leads for Words That Click, I’d be screwed about now. Luckily that’s not the case for me.

But some businesses do rely on one source to drive all their traffic. If that’s the case for you, my advice is to diversify.  Quickly!

It’s critical that you have traffic coming from different sources – paid search, SEO, articles, videos, social media and more.

Yes, there will be one that you probably focus on more than the others and will probably drive more traffic than the others. But if it’s your only source of traffic (especially if it’s free) you’re in an extremely risky state.

So diversify your online (and offline) marketing efforts. Be wary of building an online marketing strategy that’s based on free traffic. And though I don’t plan to devote too much more time to it, I’ve still got a few more tricks up my sleeve so I expect to be back on top of the local 10-Pack soon!

But this is just too good not to share so please excuse my having a little fun with it!

Here’s the setup:

A recent study about how people find local businesses shows that people now use search engines more than any other method to locate a local business. Clearly if you own a local business, you need to figure out how to get high visibility in the search engines or you’re missing out on a lot of potential business.

So how do you get that visibility?

There are a number of ways, but we’re going to take a look at a local search query in Google because if you haven’t heard by now, Google dominates the search engine market.

If you do search for “st louis auto repair” in Google you’ll notice at the very top of the search results is an area that says “Local business results for auto repair near St. Louis, MO.”

To the left you’ll see a map of the St. Louis region and to the right you’ll see a listing of 10 local businesses.

These results are also known as the “Google 10-Pack” and, since they’re the first thing a searcher sees on the search results page, are extremely important.

But it gets even better for the 10-Pack. If you were to do a search for just plain old “auto repair,” Google will determine where your computer is located and still put the 10-Pack, with local business listings, near the top of the search results. I say near the top because if you don’t use a geo-qualifier like “St. Louis” with your results, the 10-Pack appears after the first few organic search results.

The bottom line is if you can get your local business to the top of the 10-pack, you get a ton of visibility from locals looking for local companies to do business with.

So a few months ago my friend, expert Internet marketer and Likeability Guy Bob Sommers shared a story with me about helping a local spa in Maui get to the top of the 10-Pack. It was a small spa yet was able to beat out the likes of the Ritz Carlton and Four Season Hotel spas.

That got me thinking about whether I could get my local St. Louis Internet marketing business, Words That Click, to the top of the 10-Pack.

Now I’m not an SEO guy. My specialty is AdWords and pay per click. But I decided to devote a little bit of time to see if I could at least get in the top 10 on the Google Local Search 10-Pack.

First I did some keyword research and decided to target the phrases “St. Louis Internet Marketing” and “St. Louis Online Marketing.”

Next I tried to find myself in the local listing for those terms. I wasn’t on the first page, or the second, or the third, or . . . well, let’s just say I gave up trying to find myself after reaching page 10.

So I talked with Bob to get some ideas, modified my local business listing in Google, changed some things around on my web site and noticed I started inching higher and higher.

Then last week, I made a few minor tweaks and all of a sudden I jumped from page 2 for “St. Louis online marketing” and page 3 for “St. Louis internet marketing” to the #1 spot on the #1 page of the local business results for BOTH those keywords!

That’s right, I beat out all the other local firms that do SEO for a living at their own game and I have the screen shots to prove it.

Now, getting there is one thing, I’m sure staying there will be more of a challenge as the SEO firms take aim at me. In fact, my friend Michael Slawin who runs hitsthatclick.com – and, despite what he tells me, TOTALLY ripped off my company name – has already taken back the top spot for “st. louis online marketing” and bumped me to the #2 spot.

But I’m still #1 for St. Louis internet marketing and am enjoying all this for as long as it lasts!

But more important than my own ego is the take away for you . . . if  a lowly PPC guy who has little experience in SEO can get his business ranked at the top of the Local Business Listings in a little over a month in an industry full of SEO specialists . . . what’s stopping you from taking the top ranking in the 10-Pack for your local business?

It’s said the one-eyed king rules the land of the blind. And most local business owners are still in the dark when it comes to local search.

This presents a great opportunity for local business owners who take a little bit of time and effort to position themselves in front of the prospects most of their competitors are missing out on.

Oh, and if you’d like some help or advice on getting your local business to the top of the 10-Pack, let’s talk!

Update: Well my time at the top was short-lived. Find out what happened and find out about the important reminder I got about the difference between SEO and PPC.

Listen up.

I’m going to share a little secret with you about selling information products online.

The real money is made on the back end.

It’s easy to miss this fact with all the hype, sensationalism and “make $500,000 in 3 hours” BS being peddled all over the Internet.

Though there are exceptions, the truth is you’re probably not going to strike it rich selling a $27 ebook or MP3 recording online.

But it doesn’t matter.

Because it’s not about how much you make from the entry level product, it’s what happens after that first sale is made.

That’s where the real income potential comes from.

My last blog post about getting over the myth that people won’t pay for information online ended with a mention of some powerful psychological factors that work in your favor when it comes to selling information products online.

First, when you create and sell authoritative, high-quality information that delivers as promised (or, better yet,  overdelivers!), your expert status is greatly enhanced in the buyers’ minds. It helps you build strong bonds with your customers who come to view you as THE go-to expert in your field.

Second, you get the rule of Commitment and Consistency kicking in. When people pay money to buy your information product, they’ve made a commitment to you. And human psychology dictates that people want to stay consistent with their past actions. This means it’s more likely that these people will pay for other products and services you may offer them in the future.

(Quick related side note: One of the most common marketing mistakes I see in any business, online or off, is they don’t market to their existing and/or past customers. That’s a mistake because it is MUCH easier and cheaper to sell to someone who’s already demonstrated a willingness to give you their money than to go out and try to solicit new business.)

So where does this leave you?

You’ve sold your ebook or other entry level product for $17, $27, or whatever and you now have a following of people who regard you as THE expert in your niche, know you, like you and trust you, and have already demonstrated that they’re willing to pay to access the expertise in that big, juicy brain of yours.

When it comes to having a list of prospects, it doesn’t get much better than that!

Leveraging that gift is how you really make money selling information products.

You can do this by:

• Creating and selling higher priced information products like membership sites, teleseminars, webinars, courses, audio CDs, etc.

• Landing lucrative speaking engagements

• Creating group coaching/consulting opportunities

• Organizing bootcamps for your followers (fans)

• Getting highly paid one on one coaching engagements

You see, selling that first information product isn’t so much about the money as it is getting your foot in the door. Once you’ve done that, it’s a lot easier to get invited in and reap the rewards that lay inside!

And one that keeps a lot of people from creating and selling information products that could generate a very nice passive income stream for themselves.

It goes something like this -  “people won’t pay for information online, they just want to find the free stuff.”

WRONG!

Yes, people are looking for free information online. However, when they come across information they perceive as valuable and they believe could improve their lives, they definitely are willing to pay for it.

People have been paying to get information in various forms for years:

• Books
• Newspapers
• Magazines
• Premium cable
• Satellite radio
• Newsletters

Sure, they can read the books, magazines and newspapers for free at the library, but they still pay for the convenience of having their own copy delivered to their homes.

Sure, they can watch TV for free using an antenna, but they still pay for premium cable/satellite stations to get (perceived) premium content that isn’t available on network TV.

Sure, they can listen to the radio for free at home on in their cars, but they still pay for satellite radio to get more choices, specialty content, and commercial-free radio.

Sure, they can get lots of information for free about finance, health and other topics, but they still pay for a newsletter that gives them an expert or insider’s view and/or pulls information from a variety of sources and puts it all in one place.

The Internet hasn’t changed any of that. People  still pay (and do pay) for information that offers convenience, more choices, expert advice, etc. online.

There will ALWAYS be a market for quality information that people want and can help them improve their lives in some way. And if you can convince people that the information product you are selling does that, they will pay for it online or offline.

There’s another important point I’d like to make about free content.

And it’s that people simply don’t value free content as much as they do the content they pay for.

This creates a huge opportunity for experts like speakers, authors, consultant, coaches, etc. who sell information products. When people pay money for the expert information you provide, they pay more attention to it and to you.

Your expert status is elevated in their minds. And when you have a group of people who have already demonstrated that they’re willing to pay money to access your brain AND they have started to worship the ground you walk on, some very powerful psychology kicks in.

And that leads to the secret benefit of selling information products online. A secret that will be revealed in the next post so stay tuned . . .

You’ve . . .

• prepared and delivered the speech(es)
• written the book(s)
• designed the consulting/coaching program(s)
• developed the expertise
• solved the problem(s) for clients

The hard part’s done.

All that’s left is turning it into a residual income stream for yourself.

This is perhaps the most compelling online business opportunity out there for authors, consultants, speakers, trainers, coaches and other experts – leveraging the Internet to take your expertise and convert it into a passive income stream.

It’s a model that’s been big in the world of Internet Marketing for a long time – Internet Marketing experts selling information products like eBooks, membership sites, teleseminars, webinars, and more. Many making huge amount of money doing it.

Selling Internet Marketing-related information products is an extremely competitive industry. But here’s the thing. You can apply the exact same business model to your industry and probably have little to no competition.

There are countless niches out there for experts who repurpose the material and expertise they already have and deliver it online. And most of the players in these niches haven’t caught on to how to build a decent website, let alone sell information products that people will pay for.

I believe in this opportunity so greatly that it’s become the primary focus of my St. Louis Online Marketing consulting firm. I’ve started consulting and/or partnering with experts from various industries to help them create their own online passive income stream.

Over the weeks and months ahead, I’ll be sharing more of my ideas on potential of this opportunity and how you can turn your expertise into Sales While You Sleep Soundly.

Content.

If you do nothing else but put out a regular stream of relevant and authoritative content you will put yourself heads and tails above most, if not all, of your competition.

The content can be . . .

• blog posts
• articles
• videos
• audio podcasts
• blog comments
• message board posts
• widgets
• mashups
• software

or ideally some combination of the above.

I see many small business owners grappling with how to best market their businesses online.

Some of this is due to confusion that results from getting conflicting advice from Internet marketing professionals who have their own biases (ie. the SEO consultant tells you the key is SEO, the social media consultant will say you need social media, etc.).

Some is due to listening to fellow business owners who don’t understand the first thing about online marketing.

And some is caused by chasing the latest secret can’t miss strategy from some Internet marketing “guru” instead of developing and following a set strategy.

Stop. Take a deep breath. Relax.

I’m going to simplify things for you.

It all boils down to content.

You are an expert at what you do. You have a unique perspective on your marketplace. You know your product/service and customers better than anyone.

If you focus on sharing that expertise and creating original, authoritative, relevant content for your customers and prospects, you’ve won most of the online marketing battle.

I’m not saying things like SEO, PPC, social networking, etc. aren’t important. Using them strategically can definitely help increase the odds of people finding the content you publish online.

However, these techniques are not a substitute for quality content. While they may be able to generate a quick spike in traffic, it will be short-lived and won’t help you in creating a sustainable, profitable business.

So my advice is this . . .

Before spending thousands per month on SEO efforts, before of spending hours a day on social networking, before driving yourself insane chasing the latest “can’t miss” Internet marketing strategy . . . focus on putting together a content development and production strategy.

Get that in place first and then move on to working on the other stuff (or hiring someone to help you do it).

Regularly publish valuable, authoritative, relevant, and original content. This will do more for your Internet marketing success than any other tip I can offer.

Seriously.

In 1932, Claude Hopkins published “Scientific Advertising” – one of the great all-time books on direct marketing. Reading it will likely give you more insights into how to market your business online than any of the latest programs being pitched by Internet Marketing gurus. And at under 9 bucks, it’s probably one of the best investments in your online marketing education you can make.

Re-reading this book recently, I was struck by the following sentences . . .

“People do not expect an advertiser to lie. They know that he can’t lie in the best mediums. The growing respect for advertising has largely come through a growing regard for its truth.”

These sentences appear in a chapter titled “Being specific.” And, no doubt, adding specificity to your advertising instead of using broad generalities and superlatives is a critical component of a successful sales letter, ad, etc.

But what you do think about the statement “People do not expect an advertiser to lie?”

Is it still true today? Or have things changed so much since 1932 that consumers now expect that advertisers are more likely to lie than tell the truth?

And if you think things have changed, what do you think these changed expectations do to the importance of including specificity in your advertising, if anything?

Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.

I say this as someone who has recently benefited from the power of it firsthand. And all it took was one article.

First, I have to say the success of this particular project was largely due to collaborating with article marketing expert, and all around great guy, Bob Sommers.

Using his expertise in article marketing, we were able to get the #2 ranking in Google for one of our keywords in less than 48 hours. And two more articles got us on the first page of Google for the other keyword we were targeting in our project.

Here’s a brief overview of what we did.

1. Keyword Research – No matter what you’re doing online, this is where it all starts. So we did our research and picked a couple of good keywords to target. They’re not ultra-competitive keywords, however, they get a fair amount of daily traffic and are highly relevant to our site.

2. Landing page – We built two landing pages on our site, one for each keyword we were targeting, and optimized each for the keyword.

3. Writing – The other talented member of our team is presentation skills training expert, and another all around great guy, Steve Hughes. Steve wrote a short article for the landing pages that provides relevant, solid information that people searching for our keywords would find useful. He also wrote a series of ~750 word articles (article publishing sites generally like articles in the 650 – 750 word range) to submit to the article submission service we used.

4. Optimize – Steve sent the articles to Bob who made some minor formatting changes to optimize the articles for publication.

5. Author Block – This is where much of the SEO magic happens. Bob wrote a brief bio at the end of each article and included links that pointed to our site. The anchor text for these links were the keywords we identified as our targets through keyword research.

6. Submit - Bob submitted the articles to a great service called Article Marketer. Articles submitted through this service go out to over 600 publishers, representing over 60,000 websites. The articles are not posted on all of those sites. However, even if it’s posted on 400 sites, that’s 400 links pointing to your website. And a BIG part of SEO is the number of links you have pointing to your site. I’m not sure how many sites our first article was submitted to, but within 48 hours, our new landing page was ranked #2 on Google.

So that’s a brief overview of the process of how 750 words can got us to #2 in Google in less than 48 hours.

If you’re targeting highly competitive keywords, don’t expect results like this. However, if you find and target relevant keywords that generate traffic and have a relatively low number of competitors, you can get great results fairly quickly through article marketing.

It’s a pretty easy strategy that many small business owners and entrepreneurs trying to establish their expert credentials in their niche and/or trying to climb up the search engine rankings can take advantage of.

For more article marketing resources, visit the resources section of SWISSMoneyBlog.com.

One last thing, if you write in the areas of personal development, Internet marketing, or marketing and relationships, you can partner up with Bob on an article marketing project of your own – for free! I can’t think of a better deal for catapulting your website up the Google rankings than that. You can find Bob at RecognizedExpert.com.

There’s a lot to like . . .

1. 175+ million active users – Even if just a small fraction are your ideal prospects, that’s still a lot of people!

2. Demographic targeting – You can target by gender, age range, education, etc. and throw in some keywords so you are tightly targeting your ideal prospects with your ads. The great thing is these are people who have self-identified themselves as members of a particular demographic and, because of the social nature of Facebook, have incentive to be honest about the information they share about themselves. This provides advertisers with one of the most accurate ways to target a particular demographic group on the web.

3. Geographic targeting – Facebook users can indicate where they live which provides a great opportunity to target people in a specific area.

4. Social action ads – When you add the social action option to your ads, Facebook  “will attach a story about any relevant interaction that a user’s friends have with your brand or business on Facebook as the headline for your creative.” So, for example, if someone joins your group on Facebook, their friends with similar interests could see your ad that has the headline along the lines of “Your friend Sally has just joined the group The Rise To The Top.” This certainly brings a nice credibility and interest factor to your ads.

5. Low competition level – Facebook advertising is still in its infancy so there’s not as much competition out there as there is for say, Google Adwords. That means you can potentially reach a lot of prospects for very low costs per clicks or impressions.

There are some things not to like (or at least be wary of) . . .

1. Timing – Search engine marketing is great because you attract people who are actively typing in keywords and phrases related to your products and/or services. That means at that very instant there is nothing more pressing on that prospect’s mind so there’s no better time to get your company’s marketing message in front of them. That is not the case with advertising on Facebook.

2. Interruption advertising – This is closely related to timing. Because you’re catching prospects while they’re chatting, catching up with friends, stalking ex-es, etc. you have to interrupt them from whatever they’re doing to get them to notice your ad. That’s not to say it’s bad, but prospects are not in that mindset where they’re actively looking for what you’re offering. Think of it more like advertising in a magazine than search engine marketing.

3. Credibility factor – Have you seen those ads that have blanketed Facebook about how to get $12,000 from the stimulus package or asking how many eyes the baby in the ad’s very disturbing picture has? Yeah, they’re annoying. No, they’re not relevant to the vast majority of people. And I think they’re affecting the credibility of the advertising space on Facebook.

4. Still working out the kinks – Again, Facebook advertising is in its infancy, as is marketing on social sites in general. Social media companies are still trying to crack the code on how to increase the performance of paid ads on their sites and make them more appealing to advertisers. Facebook is continually modifying and trying to improve the functionality and effectiveness of paid ads, but they still have a way to go.

So should your small business advertise on Facebook?

My answer, as it is most of the time: do a small test and see. You can budget a few hundred bucks or so a month, experiment, and see what kind of results you get.

My impression is that for now the small businesses that will see the greatest results are ones primarily interested in branding themselves within a particular demographic and local businesses who want to raise awareness in their area (I recently read that some dentists were finding phenomenal results with Facebook ads).

I plan to start experimenting a bit with Facebook advertising and will report back here when I have some info to share. And if you are advertising on Facebook, please share your experience in the comment section below.