Golden Ratio: Better Planning / Greater Prosperity
The quality of your planning is directly related to your level of success. Dwight Eisenhower said: "Plans soon become irrelevant, the process of plann...
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Graphic Design: Setting Tone and Mood On Your Site
As the Internet continues to develop and evolve and show us new ways to market, we're continually finding new ways of "embedding" messages into our co...
Steve Jobs – Perhaps the greatest marketing man of all time
I'm more affected by the passing of Steve Jobs than I ever expected to be and I don't know why. Maybe it's because I'm in the marketing business and I...
How to structure your all-important offer! (in 90 seconds)
Your offer is the entry point into the sales process. A good offer sets up success; a lackluster one doesn’t. Here are best practices: A good offer ...
Six Words to Sell Absolutely Anything
Everybody sells. Kids sell parents on the toys they want, what to eat for dinner and the games they want to play. Wives sell husbands on chores that n...
Single Most Important Key to a Great Marketing Headline. (30 seconds)
Relevance The single most important key to writing a great marketing headline is talking about something your audience cares about. This means it’s a ...
Oops, I must have been sprayed with money repellant
The weird thing about it was it was so palpable. I could viscerally feel the glass ceiling holding me down like a trapped animal. I’d just gotten my a...
Are compulsions interfering with your prosperity? (in 30 seconds)
My most recent go-to compulsive behaviors have been TV and food. When it all gets to be "too much" the place I've gone has been zoning-out in front of...
What is an Enlightened Business? (in 30 seconds)
Here is the short version of what an enlightened business looks like: A business that hurts no one and benefits everyone and everything An organizatio...
The single highest business best practice. (in 30 seconds)
Marketing that feels good to you and your potential clients is simply more effective and profitable. It is your best, best-practice, Here's some backu...
Your mind is magic — find out why. (in 30 seconds)
Your mind is magic. You have a “reality distortion field” just like Steve Jobs. Perhaps yours is not as powerful as his was, but you have one. Steve s...
Your Business Plan (read in 30 seconds)
A good business plan is about two things: 1) It is about the people you are helping 2) And how you help them The more tightly you define the “who an...
SEO Backlink Strategies To Avoid
Everyone involved in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) craves inbound links, but unfortunately, they're hard to come by. The fact that they're one of t...
Graphic Design: The Visual Voice of Your Business
Welcome back! In our last blog, we talked a bit about why graphic design is so vital for online businesses, especially in terms of making yourself sta...
How to bring the Steve Jobs effect to your business. (in 30 seconds)
The people who worked with Steve Jobs teased him about having a Reality Distortion Field because he made the "impossible" happen so many times. In my ...
Deliver on promises and they’ll sing your praises. (in 30 seconds)
Ask yourself: How can I deliver my services so my clients get results and experience true satisfaction? • Are you signing the right kind of people i...
From Vision to Results (read in 30 seconds)
Getting real-world results from the vision in your head and heart is charted in the list below. Vision informs goals. Goals lead to planning. Planni...
The Future of Business
The world is changing You've noticed that the world is changing. People are changing too and this means markets are changing. You need to keep pace. D...
Marketing a Crowdfunding Project
So, you've decided to get in on the crowdfunding craze. It's a good time to do it, and loads of entrepreneurs are finding success with their new vent...
Truth and Sincerity: the Currency of Trust in Selling
While building trust has always been a crucial part of the sales process, it's become even more important in the digital age. Modern consumers expect ...
Kickstarter Best Practices: Top Crowdfunding Examples
If you're looking to get into crowdfunding, one of the easiest ways to see what works and what doesn't is by looking at some of the most successful pr...
Pinterest Vs. Google+: Strengths and Weaknesses
Chances are, you've only got so much time that you or your staff can devote to social media. Once you've got the first three or four accounts set up, ...
Why JOY helps you build your enlightened business. (in 45 seconds)
Joy, love and courage are allies in building your enlightened business. Your biggest obstacle is fear: fear of failure, fear of being seen as less-tha...
Making step-by-step procedures for your service. (in 30 seconds)
You’ve got clients and they’re getting results, now it’s time to formalize the processes you use to create success. Sometimes consultants and solo-pre...
Get in the habit of quick, instinctual decision making (in 30 seconds)
When was the last time you overthought your marketing, business, or anything else for that matter? For most business owners this is a problem of epic ...
The all-important question of price! (in 40 seconds)
The price of your product or service sends a message to your prospective clients. What message do you want to send? When you “price to the value” of...
Top Three Lead Generation Techniques (in 30 seconds)
Here are the top three lead generation techniques: • Organic lead generation via social media (Ex: Facebook) • Paid ads (Ex Google or Facebook) • PR...
Ode to Cashiers
Ode to Cashiers Your job is to serve people John Q. Public You come to work with a smile when you can When you can’t muster a grin you come to serve Y...
The Facebook Rumormill
People love talking about Facebook. Second perhaps only to Google, Facebook tends inspire a strange celebrity-like relationship where folks are consta...
Where's the Beef? Adopting a Content Strategy for Your Site.
If you were alive and conscious throughout the 80s, you undoubtedly remember the famous series of ads that Wendy's ran asking "Where's the beef?" If y...
Optimize Your Website Design
Greetings, and welcome back for the last of our articles talking about website redesign. We pretty much wrapped it up in the last blog, but I wanted t...
Website Redesign With the Customer in Mind
Welcome back! In our last blog, we started talking about whether it's time for your website to get a redesign. Just to recap, the our last blog boiled...
How to Calculate Inbound Marketing Success
The pioneering ad man John Wanamaker once famously said “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The trouble is I don't know which half.” Thr...
Top Five Social Media Sites
There's a rather big, intimidating world of social media out there. With so many competing services all trying to draw in users and advertisers, it ca...
The Nuts and Bolts of Content Marketing
Today, we're continuing our series of high-level discussions about developing a content strategy for your website. As the title suggests, we'll be spe...
Are you overwhelmed with the details of marketing?
When I teach an Internet marketing seminar or talk with business owners, it's clear that people are overwhelmed with all the the things they need to d...
Internet Marketing and Facebook Advertising
The art of advertising is not dead, it has simply taken a turn to digital. Here are the five steps you’ll need to take if you want to run a successful...
Google's Penguin Update and Your SEO
It's time to talk about that ol' black magic once more, and put a sort of cap on our mini-series of discussions about negative or "black hat" search e...
A Great Content Strategy Learning Experience
Just a couple of days ago I returned from Portland's LavaCon and Content Strategy Workshops. It was a fantastic week of workshops and learning session...
The Future of Internet Marketing Part 1
"Greetings, my friends. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives..." - The Amazing Cr...
When planning your marketing think "Apps"
The Internet is no longer an optional avenue for you to market your business—it is a must! "Apps" which is short for "Computer Software Applications" ...
The Three Keys of Internet Marketing
Some companies seem to have figured out the combination to unlock the marketing power of the Internet. They have successfully engaged their online tar...
The Three Most Powerful LinkedIn Strategies
OK, so, how many of you have LinkedIn profiles? Most of you, right? Now, how many of you actually use them? If you aren't making good use of LinkedIn,...
Three Steps To Twitter Stardom
As things stand right now, Twitter is probably the second most-popular social media outlet for marketing, after Facebook. (One of these days, I'm gonn...
The Future of Crowdfunding
So, we've talked quite a bit in the last few blogs about crowdfunding and how you could be using it today to fuel new ideas. It's an idea that's arriv...
Black Hat Internet Marketing: Here's what to stay away from. . .
We're going to take a bit of a walk on the wild side today. We'll be dabbling in dark powers and taking a look into Nietzsche's abyss. In short, we're...
Five key Social Media strategies
Like Bob Dylan said, “the times they are a'changin'.” The Internet has created a more thorough shift in marketing than any other new technology in his...
There's more to Social Media than Facebook and Twitter 1: Reddit
So, when companies talk about leveraging social media marketing, generally they just stick to talking about Twitter and Facebook. However, there are s...
When good salesmanship hurts sales
Sales situations can crop up and any time. I was sitting with a client a few days ago helping him prepare an ad for a magazine. The ad was designed to...
The creative side of step-by-step planning (in 30 seconds)
Buckminster Fuller: "To change an existing paradigm focus on building an entirely new one." This is the epitome of creativity. But the creative proces...
Intuition for Engineers
It sounded like a prison sentence. Here's what I heard recently from a client: "I guess I just need to sit and meditate for 30 minutes each day." His ...
Selling With Empathy
Empathy: noun the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. Empathy is our base state. Human empathic abilities are always switched on;...
On-Page SEO – The First Step to Ranking High on Google
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the true bread and butter of online marketing. Most web browsing still begins at search engines, and as more and m...
When Selling Keep the Long-Term Picture in Mind
Sometimes I wonder why there are so many poor salespeople in this world when, fundamentally, every person in sales is still a consumer the rest of the...
Is It Time For a Website Redesign?
You'd have to be pretty satisfied with the performance of your website not to occasionally look at it and wonder if it's time to redesign it. After al...
Two Internet Marketing Security Tips
Many of us who use our web sites to get more business for our companies will be aware that cyber theft is a very real threat to the health and welfare...
Managing Your Content Marketing Strategically
Well, we're nearing the end of our series on content strategy, but we've still got a couple more topics to cover. Today, we'll be expanding on some of...
On the Internet Content Strategy is King
We've probably all seen it as we've browsed company websites: the blogs that, clearly, no one reads. You find a nice-looking site, it seems to have go...
Make YouTube a Marketing Force for Your Business
When people are thinking about social media sites, there's a major one that often gets overlooked: YouTube. Honestly, it's not just about sharing cats...
How To Create A Content Strategy
In our last blog, we talked a bit about content strategies: how to make sure you know why you're engaging in content marketing, and making sure that t...
How to Buy Internet Marketing Services 2
We did a blog recently where we offered some general tips on how to search for an Internet marketing service. It's a daunting prospect for anyone, esp...
Content Marketing Execution: How to Interface with Your Writing Team
So, originally our discussion of content strategy was going to end on the post about CMSs and the editorial role, but I realized there was one serious...
Four ways Web automation systems drives up sales and profits
On the Internet, data is power. Your have huge amounts of information about each visit to your website, hidden away in server logs. Every moment a p...
Three Questions To Ask Your SEO Company
Choosing a search engine optimization (SEO) company can be a daunting prospect. There are literally thousands of SEO companies online, all promising t...
Online marketing — two concepts you need to understand
Online marketing has some common misconceptions that I'd like you to think about. The two biggest mistakes people make is to think that Search Engine ...
Selling in a consumer empowered world
It's a hard-learned lesson that far too many businesses still cannot grasp: today's consumers are unique in the history of consumerism. With 75% of al...
Five questions for your web design company
Most people who are in business know they need a web presence. This means creating a website that will have one, or perhaps all, of the following: • D...
Marketing in the age of the Internet and Social Media
For years marketing has been a function of trying to determine what people want, crafting a message to speak to that need or desire, and pushing out a...
The missing link to Internet marketing success
If you're looking at doing your own Internet marketing, it's easy to find loads of advice about things like Search Engine Optimization and social medi...
The Facebook/Google Rivalry
So, we got a few emails about the posts we ran a little while back with our predictions for the future, wanting to hear more about the merging of soci...
SEO, Social Media, and Web-Automation Seminar
Need to get up to speed quickly in Internet marketing? This seminar will teach you the basics of Search, Social, and automation Systems. Quick Interne...
Questions to ask your web designer
Most people who are in business need a good web site. This means creating a site that will have most of the following: • A design that is attractive ...
Internet marketing's three most common errors
Internet marketing should be a part of any company's marketing strategy. The Internet is where business is done these days and where your clients and ...
Understanding Facebook Edgerank Part 2
Welcome back to the final part of our series on utilizing EdgeRank for Facebook marketing. If you missed it, in the first post we broke down what exa...
Top Five Facebook Marketing Mistakes
In the right hands, Facebook marketing can be a great tool for growing your business and driving organic traffic to your website. However, there are a...
Farm for leads with 5 Proven Internet Marketing Methodologies
Marketing is a lot like farming. A knowledgeable grower knows he or she has to till the fields, fertilize, apply the right amount of water and then wa...
Is cloud computing important for marketing your business?
Last week I attended the biggest cloud computing convention in the world—a trade show called Dreamforce. Why should you care? Because cloud computing ...
There's more to Social Media than Facebook and Twitter 3: Foursquare
One of the most interesting directions social media has gone in the last couple years is mobile. That is, social media services and applications which...
The Future of Internet Marketing Part 2
"And now the great seer, soothsayer, sage and former financial adviser to the Greek government, Carnac the Magnificent!" -Ed McMahon Welcome back to t...
Back Links – The Big SEO Muscle
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) remains the best technique anyone has yet come up with for getting your website noticed online. However, SEO isn't pe...
Six Top Facebook Marketing Best Practices Part 2
Hello again! This is the concluding post in our series on Facebook marketing best practices. As we said last time, this is an exciting, ever-changing ...
Three Hot Facebook Marketing Tips
There's a lot more to Facebook marketing than just posting clever status updates and your favorite pictures. Once you dig beneath the surface a bit, t...
When Selling Focus on the Large Picture Benefit for Your Client
When you've been selling something, you've probably had this happen: You lead off with your best pitch. The customer seems interested, but a bit hesit...
Six Top Facebook Marketing Best Practices Part 1
The world of Facebook marketing is a big, wide-open one. The field is so new that there are very few hard and fast rules about what you should and sho...
Do's and Don'ts of Crowdfunding
With crowdfunding now on the radar as a viable fundraising technique for businesses large and small, everyone is rushing to get in on the game. This m...
Understanding Facebook Edgerank Part 1
Surely one of the most baffling aspects of Facebook for both newbies and oldtimers alike is how Facebook determines what does and does not appear on a...
Mapping out your marketing and sales process
If you’re in business then you are in the business of sales and marketing. If you have a well articulated vision or marketing process you have a disti...
Website Design Post-Launch Testing
Welcome back! We're continuing our series on website redesigns today to talk about what is possibly the single most vital period whenever you're creat...
Internet Marketing Keys: Understanding Both People and Technology
At the risk of sounding like an old zen master, I'm coming to worry that too many companies engaging in Internet marketing are fundamentally out of ba...
Facebook Marketing - Five Changes To Improve Your Connections
When the hoodied one speaks, the Internet trembles... Given its prominence in Internet marketing at the moment, it's hardly a surprise that whenever a...
Why you should NOT invest in the Facebook IPO
To buy or not to buy, that is the question. As we've been talking about this week, Facebook's IPO is coming up, and everyone's wondering whether they ...
An Introduction to Crowdfunding
It's probably happened to everyone: You're going about your daily life when suddenly inspiration hits, and you've suddenly got a great idea for a new ...
How to Buy Internet Marketing Services
It's hardly a secret that there are a lot of Internet marketing services out there. Like with any booming market, there's a glut of players in it, to ...
SEO Social Signals: The Big Question Mark
Today, we're going to wade into what's probably one of the biggest questions in the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) world right now: To what extent d...
You Need Good Graphic Design For Your Business Now More Than Ever
If you're running a small business and we suggested that you seriously needed to invest in graphic design, you might think we were being, well, optimi...
Five skills your Social Media company must have
When you're looking for a company to help with your social media, it can be overwhelming. There are a LOT of Internet marketing firms out there, and a...
Internet Marketing Success — What Are The Odds?
Feeling uncomfortable with the rapid change in your business due to the Internet? Get used to it. Not only is this trend here to stay it’s going to ga...
There's more to Social Media than Facebook, Twitter 2: Google+, Pinterest
Welcome back to the next installment in our series on utilizing some of the "other" social websites in your social media marketing! Unlike the big two...
Branding Goes Far Beyond Your Logo
We've been talking about branding and we've spent the last couple blogs talking about the subject generally: what goes into branding, and all the diff...
There's more to Social Media than Facebook, Twitter 4: Tout, Klout, Kickstarter
So, as we near the end of our series on social media marketing on some of the smaller services, today we're going to look a bit further down the road....
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As the Internet continues to develop and evolve and show us new ways to market, we're continually finding new ways of "embedding" messages into our co...
Steve Jobs – Perhaps the greatest marketing man of all time
I'm more affected by the passing of Steve Jobs than I ever expected to be and I don't know why. Maybe it's because I'm in the marketing business and I...
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Relevance The single most important key to writing a great marketing headline is talking about something your audience cares about. This means it’s a ...
