Living Radically Ambitious

Ah, work at the beach. That’s what we dream of in this Internet Lifestyle. And it’s exactly what I got to do this week when I took a quick trip over to Cocoa Beach to hang out with Sal Greco. We ended up shooting 4 videos on Internet Marketing, productivity, products and networking.

Today I wanted to get up the first of the 4 videos. What I thought was a cool angle is that fact that Sal and I are 100% polar opposites in how we approach networking. Sal is loud, straight forward and has no shame in just striking a conversation.

On the other hand, I like to build rapport and authority with a networking crowd, thus why I always try and speak on panels, host or sponsor an event or bring in superstars on my behalf. What this does for me, is it allows others to approach me. Makes me much more comfortable.

Anyway, here is a quick 5 minute video shot right outside of Coconuts on Cocoa Beach where we go over some networking tips and get some specifics on how Sal has been able to reach the A-List (especially in the affiliate marketing world) very quickly.

Networking Takeaways

1. Be noticeable. You want someone to remember you and what you do. If you cannot accomplish this task, you are wasting your time.
2. Network with a “fear of loss” mindset. What is going to happen if you don’t talk to someone or meet a potential partner or affiliate? This fear of loss should give you the strength to pursue the elite while networking.
3. Let your personality shine. Sal likes to get down on the dance floor and look loud. I like to speak. What is the personality trait you can bring out when networking?

What is your networking strategy? Let’s chop it up in the comments below.

-Greg

Over the past few weeks (maybe even months) I have been watching Facebook Ads closely. More specifically the Internet Marketing ads that show up on my profile.

Then tonight I saw the screenshot below and it finally triggered me to do some investigating and drop this post.

3 Facebook Ads, promoting 3 guru products all at the same time on my page. I find this even more interesting as only one of the 3 is a traditional “guru product launch.” The other 2 are ongoing promotions designed to bring in new business and grow their prospect list.

Here is a quick breakdown of the marketing strategies I see in play:

• All 3 utilize the IM superstar’s name. The first is from Rich Schefren (whom I am currently promoting). The second is for Mike Keonings and the final for Frank Kern.
• 2 of the 3 are from the marketer directly. Only the middle ad for Mike is an affiliate’s ad.
• In the affiliate ad I like that ‘affiliate Nick’ has some social proof with a photo hanging out with Mike Koenings, showing that he is an actual friend (or at least met him at a conference)
• 2 of the 3 are promoting webinars that sell you something. Rich is promoting his Business Growth System and Ryan is promoting Mike’s Main Street Marketing Machines via a live webinar w/ Mike.
• All 3 not only feature the “guru’s name” but also their face. They are showing they are real people. This is cool to me as the new trend has been “shitty white background powerpoints” where the marketer just reads directly off the screen. I actually applaud them by showing who they are and what they are about.

Ok, now on to the landing pages. Because after all, they want you to click their ads to see their landing pages, right? Duh.

The Webinar For Mike Koenings

For the webinar with Mike, the landing page is now offline, as it was promoting a webinar for an offer that is no longer online. Main Street Marketing Machines went off the market on Sunday night or something like that. But when the landing page was live, it was your typical name and email to register for a webinar with minimal copy.

Rich’s Webinar Registration Landing Page

Rich Schefren is also sending people to a webinar registration page. Here is the link: http://www.returnonvisitor.com/?ls=518 (not affiliate link)

On Rich’s page you do NOT have to enter your email on the 1st page. You only choose your time slot as the call to action. Very nonaggressive selling here. After you click “Reserve My Spot” you are sent to a webinar registration form. You know, the boring and bland pages that look right out of a corporate Go2Meeting registration. I like this approach, as it feels very empowering to the person registering.

Frank’s Weirdo Promotion Page

Kern’s landing page is where the magic happens. It makes absolutely no sense, but why would something Kern does make sense? The landing page is classic Kern copy but with a twist. There is really nothing for sale. Just a questionnaire.

The questionnaire is followed up by one of Frank’s team members scheduling a quick business session to determine if Frank and you can work together and make millions. Interesting strategy and one that has probably brought Frank some nice leads outside of his “Syndicate club.”

Here s the link to see the salesletter -> http://www.frankkernsuccess.com/scheme2.htm (not affiliate link)

So, What’s The Point?

The point is that you can see the powerful impact that Facebook can have, even for gurus. If they are getting their traffic from Facebook, with NO affilites, it can surely bring you traffic as well.

Also, just because they have big names in our industry, doesn’t mean that the Small Business owner down the block knows about Mass Control, Traffic Geyser and Strategic Profits (and I bet most of my readers don’t either). That makes Facebook an ever playing field. And a playing field for more than lead generation, but real conversions on pricey products.

Rich’s BGS being sold on the webinar is a $3,000 product. Main Street Marketing Machines is also a $3k product. My guess is that Kern is making more than that off the private clients he picks up via his promotions.

When you are developing your products (need a product, I can help), you need to think about how you are going to bring in leads and how you are going to funnel them into becoming customers. Facebook is an amazing channel and so many people get it wrong. You can get it right by either:

1. Creating an offer or program that works directly into Facebook user’s sweetspot; or
2. Adapt your current marketing to build a lead gen system from Facebook traffic and bring it into your larger customer and product funnel

Either way, if you are not getting new prospects and customers from Facebook, you are missing out on a gold mine.

Are you using Facebook to promote your business? Let’s talk about it below.

-Greg

How much thought and effort do you take into the lifespan of your readers, prospects and customers?

My guess would be very little. And we are all guilty of it. You work really hard to create your “free report” or “video series.” You even build a cool landing page and have an optin form to start building your list.

But if you are like many bloggers and online entrepreneurs, that is the end of the line. Did you followup to ensure they were able to download it?

This step is key. Just last week we released the Radically Ambitious Guide To Social Proof as a free download and after following up with people that downloaded it, realized the file was corrupt. Had we not followed up, we still might not know. (it has since been fixed, so download it here)

But beyond the obvious, how are you taking engagement levels beyond that email address or first sale?

Is your thank you page optimized to create social reactions (Facebook likes and comments)? Does it provide offers for upsells or maybe there is another bonus or freebie on the page to strengthen your relationship with them?

When building your blog, you posted frequently to build up your readers and social presence. You followed up comments with comments of your own and were participating on other blogs, on Twitter and on Facebook.

But then I see the way you build and treat your mailing lists and your customers and it freaks me out. That subscriber and customer is so important to your business. As an Internet Marketer, the way you relate to and optimize your list of prospects and customers can be the difference between sitting in your day job for another year or two or making a substantial profit by adding more value.

And we are all guilty of it.

I have been taking inventory of my own products recently and looking at the followup sequences. When I am selling someone for the first time, there is a good deal of value and followup. But when it comes to ensuring that the customers are using the product and taking action, not so much.

For the New Music Economy course, I have 3 separate sales sequences from a webinar sequence, to a blog post sequence to a hard sell over email sequence. And they work nicely to put customers into my introductory product.

But then what?

After they become customers, where is the followup to make sure they fill out their workbooks, watch the videos and start taking action? Where is the congratulations email after they finish the course that upsells them into our bigger packages? It’s just not there.

And that is what leaving money on the table looks like.

So today as you begin your blogging adventure, and start looking for new friends to bring into your world, think about how you are building relationships with them, adding value and bringing them along in the sales process. Rich Schefren told me once that the most valuable asset for an entrepreneur or small business owner is their most recent active customers.

The dude was right.

Let’s chat. What are you doing to move your customers along in your sales funnel?

-Greg

P.S. If you don’t have a product yet to move your readers down the funnel, consider joining one of my product creation sessions. Learn more and register here.

Top photo by Stathis Stavrianos (Stathis_1980)

Last week I quietly rolled out a new DVD to help people get started online. The DVD is called the 3 Internet Marketing Secrets Of The New Rich. For its cliche title, the information is rock solid and will truly help anyone who grabs it and applies it build an affiliate marketing business that transitions into an informational marketing business.

Below is a sneak peek video I shot a little while back when the first proof copy of the DVD came in the mail.

What’s on the DVD?

Well it’s broken into 3 sections. The first deciphers the business model and builds into niche selection. The niche selection is very in-depth, yet it is not overwhelming. The goal is to brainstorm your likes and passions and see if its viable, quickly and efficiently. In fact, the entire DVD is geared around action.

You can learn tactics and strategies all day, and while I break out some of my best dance moves, the biggest strength of the DVD is getting you on the dance floor.

The second part of the DVD is all about getting your site online, and then getting content on the site. For some this may be a bit on the beginner side, but even for some of you that are Wordpress Ninjas, you might learn something about getting set up quick. Remember the goal is to take action and generate your first dollar online, not wait 3 months for your amazing graphics team to blow you away.

The last part is obviously my favorite as it digs into New Rich marketing tactics. They have been designed to help you work smarter and leverage your time. SO no directory or article submissions will be found anywhere in the 2 hour piece of plastic.

Anyway, the DVD is less than $20 and you get a shiny present delivered to your door in a few days. It can be a great present for someone that you want to help get started, or for yourself if you are lacking that direction to stop reading sites like these and start making them.

Either way, you can buy your copy here.

Talk soon,

Greg

Today I have a guest post from Sal Greco from Surfer Lifestyle Design. Sal lives a few blocks away, right on Cocoa Beach and is spending his first years out of college building an incredible niche business. Below are his ideas for post graduation.

This post is directed and dedicated to those who are about to graduate, have recently graduated, or anyone looking for a career change. What I am telling you is, “do not waste your time in this current job market, instead input yourself into your desired industry and conjure up your own education!”

Almost exactly one year to this date I was sitting in a Central Florida University classroom, studying traditional marketing, with my head in a textbook saying to myself, “WHAT THE FU*K AM I GOING TO DO WITH THIS”! (this was the semester before graduation…)

The University had me on the conventional marketing track, taking classes from marketing research, marketing strategies, to marketing management. To graduate you had to take those three courses in a row, consecutively. Now I can assure you, that when I was in the very last course, I still had no clue how to really conduct market research, strategize a marketing campaign, or manage my own self for that matter…

Real cynical thoughts popped in my head like, “maybe business school, is just a business, and they purposely do not teach you enough, so you pay to stay longer (via a traditional MBA).” Until one day, when something happened, and the future started to look brighter, and clearer…

To make more out of a project in an Entertainment Marketing class, I formed a hip-hop/funky music group, the “Pharmaceutical Funk“. The timing was perfect, because Greg had just released his course, The New Music Economy, and since I had interned under him before, he slipped me a copy to check it out.

WHAM… BAM… THANK YOU MA’AM… I had finally learned what marketing was all about. In his simple to follow eCourse, I learned more about marketing than the previous 3 years at a major university. Even though the course was geared toward musicians in context, everything was there. From researching your market (I knew mall surveys where obsolete), to obtaining leads, to what to do with those leads, and how to repeat the process in automation.

Now graduation came sneaking up on me, what was I to do? Test the job market? Continue schooling?

Although not 100% on what exactly I wanted to do with myself after college, I knew 112% of how I wanted to live life after college. I wanted to live like the “New Rich“. To make a passive income online, so I can focus my time and energy into my real passions like surfing, making music, and inspiring others. To do this I fully indulged myself into the internet marketing community, and created my own “MBA 2.0 educational program“.

Since I did not know exactly the way I wanted to earn an income online, I went about testing everything [I highly do not recommend this method, I am just A.D.H.D. (Ambitiously Desired and Hyperly-Dedicated :-)]. I decided to immerse myself within the industry, work virtually for free, and contacted all of the people who I already knew worked online to say, “is there any way I can help your business while learning something for myself?”.

Lucky enough, the company I interned with let me start testing PPC ads on Facebook, and Google. Simultaneously I started blogging for myself, and engaging in the community; Spending some time on twitter, learning from other peoples blogs, but most importantly building lasting relationships.

One of the best ways I found to simultaneously learn while networking within the industry was to attend conferences immediately. Within five months after receiving my degree I had attended five major conferences including Affiliate Summits and Murray Newlands, Social Media Marketing conferences. Besides learning a ton, at these events, I busted out my personality and met anyone I could get my hands on (for a hand shake that is). I made sure to make an impression on important people, even in the after parties, I danced like a jack-ass, just really being myself, letting my “freak-flag fly”. I believe it was this lasting impression that helped me win an Affiliate Summit West platinum scholarship from the two awesome individuals who run the show, Shawn Collins, and Missy Ward (I still cannot thank you two enough).

[note from Greg: this also included jumping on stage doing a Bill Cosby impression with 3-6 Mafia]

Without a traditional post-college program to follow, I had to be very committed, disciplined, and dedicated to learning these new crafts. Even before graduating I started reading marketing books like Purple Cow, from Seth Godin. Also, with the plethora of knowledge available online (mostly for free), learning on my own became quite overwhelming to say the least. With so many free eBooks, eCourses, webinars, podcasts and “how to” videos to choose from, it is easy to fall into a “planning paralysis” where your business is not really moving anywhere, because you are stuck in a phase of “I must know more in order to continue on”.

The biggest jump in my learning curve came when I realized, information unused is information wasted.

What is the point of learning something, if when you do not immediately put it into action, you have to re-learn it when the time comes to use it? Now that I have narrowed my field of interest, I am actually working on my own projects, as well as partnering on projects, and utilizing the “learn as you go” technique. It is the surefire way to continuously take action toward you goals, while learning and growing on your way there.

I do understand that not all things can be learned on a “need to know” basis. There are some theories, and ideas that are good to implement in your every-day way of doing things. So now to continue my “Radically Ambitious MBA 2.0,” I choose wisely the voices I learn from, and make sure that every week I spend some amount of time learning a new perspective in marketing.

You already know that the days of graduating, going right into a career job, working up the latter, retiring “happy”, and dying fulfilled are OVER. So do not waste your precious time after college cleaning up your resume (or as Tim Ferris would call it, “creative nonfiction”) or even worse, paying for more schooling when you will graduate years later with more debt in the same situation.

Instead, I super-highly encourage you to get out there, start learning for yourself, and start mixing it up with the people in your industry of choice. Go on linkedin and look for local meet ups. Go to amazon.com and look at the highly recommended readings in your field. Start a contact list of all the people you know, or want to know in your industry and ask them, “is there anything I can do (for free) to bring value to your business?”.

Whether you want to own your own business, or work for a specific company, any client or employer in this market will always go with the candidate they see taking real action in their field. I hope these words hit you strong, and do not be surprised that in the time it could take you to receive an MBA, you could be hiring someone with one, or perhaps even replacing someone with one…

Surfs up,

Feel free to subscribe to more post like this from Sal Greco at Surfer Lifestyle Design. Or drop by and snag his Free Series to Charge Life Like A Surfer!