Doug McIsaac

Marketing has changed - Have you changed your marketing?

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There are very few people I know who are as knowledgeable about strategic business planning as Doug McIsaac. He's a very talented, "under the radar" expert who has a natural knack for finding simple strategies to dramatically increase your profits. Doug is my go to guy for innovative Internet Marketing ideas and I think he's crazy for sharing all of his secrets.

Ron Douglas
TrafficSage.com
RecipeSecrets.Net"

 

 

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10 Step Guide to Failing Online – Follow This and You Ensure Your Failure

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  1. Buy all of the new tools and programs. The ones with a monthly subscription option are the best.
  2. Join every Giveaway event and download everything you can.
  3. Download every free report that you can find.
  4. Get on everybody’s list — Because can’t get too many e-mails telling you to buy Product Launch Formula or Mass Control.
  5. Read every email that comes in – as soon as it comes in. You might miss some new trend if you don’t.
  6. Read and comment on forums – especially posts complaining, complaining about gurus really helps you grow your business.
  7. Bonus points if you subscribe to each post you make so you can respond if someone disagrees with you.
  8. Join Facebook and MySpace and every other Social Site on the web to make friends and find more people who will complain about how bad their business is going.
  9. Attend every teleseminar and watch every video.
  10. Make sure that your website is “Perfect” before you launch – you cannot spend too much time getting it right
  11. Spend your time writing top ten lists when you should be producing products

Tomorrow I will post the Top Ten Ways to be Successful Online.

Small Business Marketing — The 5 Deadly Sins

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I interviewed Walt with The Marketing Caddy on BlogTalkRadio March 31st follow the link if you would like to listen to the recording of our discussion:
The 5 Deadly Marketing Sins of Small Businesses
1. Not having a marketing mindset.
2. Failure to fully leverage assets.
3. Marketing to Everyone.
4. Same and Lame.
5. No Lead Generation Systems.
Bonus: Fear and Lack of Understanding of the Internet as a Marketing Tool.

7 Strengths That Your Local Business Has Over Standard Ecommerce Sites

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How you use these seven strengths is vital to you business growth. No matter what it is that you sell there are more people on the internet to buy than can ever walk through your door. Does that mean that I think you should close your doors and just operate online? No I believe that there are some huge advantages to combining the strengths of both channels.
 

That was Barnes and Noble’s biggest mistake when Amazon was just a small online bookstore that was bleeding cash. If Barnes and Noble had focused on their strength in brick and mortar locations and combined their “clicks with their bricks” they would be the largest online bookseller today and Amazon would be gone or limping along.

  What are these 7 vital ingredients that I’m talking about? 
1. You get to look a customer in the eye and ask them questions. 

There are some amazing analytics tools available on the internet for tracking and surveying customers. I use Google Analytics everyday, but in my opinion they still are not a substitute for years of looking a customer in the eye, asking them questions and watching their response. Most internet marketers never get this opportunity. That is a strength of your offline business. I believe that that if Barnes and Noble or Blockbuster had handled this better then we wouldn’t have Amazon or NetFlix.


2. Many people still like the idea of going into a store.
The shopping experience is changing, but retail stores will not go away for a long, long time. I appreciate the convenience of the web for items that I know I want. But when I want to browse nothing beats a funky little store or browising the book or movie aisles to decide what I want to buy.
 

3. You can send people from your retail location to your online store.
This is a great marketing channel. You can have a slightly different inventory available online. Many successful Online/offline stores will have their hottest, seasonal items ont their shelves and all of their inventory online.

 

4. Your local clients will tell their out of town friends.
If you do a good job of servicing your local clients they will evangelize you to their friends. You can even provide incentives to those that bring you new customers. Start


5. You can form a relationship with your customers.
This is similar to #1 but the differences are that you will see them at church the ball games etc. They will see you as a real person, and probably refer to you as your business. You’ll be the furniture guy or jewelry lady, but it will make a difference in your business.

 

6. In store Pickup

This is especially strong if you have multiple locations – like Barnes and Noble had. You can allow people to pay for their items online and pick them up in your store. This will give you another chance to upsell to them. And there is nothing better than upselling someone who is picking something up that they already paid for because they feel like they are getting a gift.

 

7. In store returns
Yes, none of us likes to take returns. But there are some great advantages to having them return it to your store. First it gives you the chance to find why they really returned it. Rarely will you get the real answer online. Second it gives you a chance to change it into an exchange or upselling them something else.

If you properly combine the strengths of your offline business with your online business you will see  significant business growth.

Asking questions

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I caught myself the other day giving my opinion on a market I really didn’t know. I was telling a gentleman some subjects that he needed to focus his energies on developing content for his market. But after I sent him the post I thought to myself…I really don’t know his market. So I resent him an e-mail explaining that I had made a mistake. A mistake that is made far too often by normally intelligent people. We feel that if we like an idea it must be the right idea.  That’s foolish and most if us do know better.  We always need to test. Repeat after me “I am NOT my market.”

I know some of you will say, “But I am the correct demographic.” You’re not, you’re too close to the decision. You can probably connect to the market and you may be correct more often than others, but you still need to test your ideas.

How do you test, it’s simple you ask questions.

But I don’t have a list. I understand, I’ve been there myself and am constantly in the same spot when I enter a new market. What do you do when you don’t have a list? Here are some ideas:

  1. Find someone that has a list and ask them to ask their list. If you present it as part of a JV offer it will work some of the time. “I’m working on a new product that I think would be a good complement to your current offerring. Would you be interested in doing a JV? I would like to start the prelaucnh by asking some questions to make sure that we’re headed the right direction”
  2. Run an AdWords campaign for your keywords and send them to a page asking them what their biggest question /challenge/concern is about your subject. George will walk you through setting up your first AdWords campaign at Online4Offline.
  3. Go to forums and look for the most common questions or make a post asking for everyone’s biggest challenge/question/concern. You may start some competition and you may find JV partners doing it in a punblic forum can be a double edged sword.
  4. Set up Google Alerts and see what others are saying about your subject.

I recommend doing a combination of these to get you closest to the correct answer.

We must ask our market what they want if we expect to be successful.

Want to improve your copy in one sentence?

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Here’s the sentence: 

“People will do anything for those who encourage their dreams, justify their failures, allay their fears, confirm their suspicions, and help them throw rocks at their enemies.” by Blair Warren

If all you did was print that out in 48 point font and post it where you could look at it as you were writing your copy you would improve. I’m going to do it. I’ve attached the file for those that would like a copy it’s here. Blair Warren Quote

He isn’t just referring to copywriting , but their is an amazing amount of wisdom in those 27 words.