Marketing Archives - Page 6 of 6

The Shark Tank Update

Just over a month ago I launched a new blog focused on the hit TV show, The Shark Tank. The blog took off and is doing well, it’s indexed in the search engines and many of the people who are on the show are sharing comments on stories written about their appearance.

A couple of weeks ago, I invited fellow blogger and friend Rob Merlino to partner with me. He’s a great writer and sees things differently which makes the blog all the more interesting. We’re continuing to develop it and are already planning other ventures like this one.

There are other blogs focused on The Shark Tank but none of them are going as deep as we are. We preview and review the Entrepreneurs appearing on the show and plan to extend the content to include people who wanted to appear, but didn’t make the cut.

The Shark Tank TV series has millions of viewers every Friday night. Even the reruns have an incredibly large audience. We’re fortunate to have some of the Sharks sharing our site on Twitter which helps to build traffic to the blog and we’re very appreciative for their kindness.

It’s extremely exciting to take a brand new domain and drive this kind of traffic in less than six weeks through natural search and indexing. Sure, we’ve used social media but none of our efforts have come from paying for traffic.

The Shark Tank posts on this blog will be migrating over to the new blog which will cut the amount of traffic to my personal blog until I come up with another topic that attracts the same kind of attention. From what I’ve learned, I believe that It won’t be long and I’ll know what the topics is.

I’m confident that if we work even harder, we can drive more traffic faster, but we have to take a break sometime! If you haven’t checked the new blog out yet, go to my Shark Tank Blog and see for yourself. It’s been fun building it and the future looks fantastic.

How to Brand Yourself with a Ferrari

Automobiles, Marketing

This is how you brand yourself with a Ferrari – Your Ferrari!

I want to inspire you to think about how you can brand yourself with a Ferrari! Your Ferrari, whatever that is. Something that makes you stand out from everyone else. Something so unique that people will see you, and know who you are.

Growing up, I always dreamed I would own a Ferrari. It took me many years to meet that dream, and about ten years ago, I bought the car that I had always wanted. At first, I felt uncomfortable driving it around, thinking it was too much, especially in Iowa. I kept that attitude for many years, until recently when I realized I have an incredible marketing tool.

I entered the Affiliate Marketing industry just over three years ago and took a keen interest in blogging. When you blog, you put the spotlight on yourself, and you have to find something that is a personal signature. I first focused on Entrepreneurship, but too many people identify as entrepreneurs, and that diluted my message. I had to find something different. I didn't know what, and I didn't stand out.
I was somewhat reluctant to use the Ferrari, but I finally decided to try it. I had a picture of my car put on my business cards right before attending Affiliate Summit East 2011 in New York City. Instantly, I had people who wanted to know if this was my dream car, to which I informed them, yes, and I already had it in my garage, and then we moved on to the conversations that impact business. I have the perfect icebreaker which is what I want.

Brand yourself with A Ferrari – What's your Ferrari?

You can imagine how pleased I was when I had several influential people recognize me at Affiliate Summit West 2012 in Las Vegas. They remembered me because the card with my Sports car opened the door. This time, I added Ferrari shirts and even shoes creating, even more, conversation. People remembered me which gives me the entry point to talk about entrepreneurship with authority.

While the Ferrari association is fresh and exciting in my book, your sports car is anything that helps others to connect with you. My friend Rob Merlino is a great example. His Sports Car is the Hot Dog Cart. People recognize him as he is the foremost expert on the Hot Dog and even has done Hot Dog Tours which get him noticed.

What’s your Ferrari, or Hot Dog Cart?

Turn Your Idea Into a Niche Marketing Concept

Automobiles, Marketing

In the last fifteen years, I have benefited greatly from developing niche marketing concepts into real businesses. With the development of the online marketing place, those niche marketing ideas have seen explosive growth, so much so that getting business has by far not been my biggest obstacles as an entrepreneur.

Developing those Niche Marketing Concepts have often come after I have learned everything I can about the marketplace by actually operating small businesses in those markets, such as a mom and pop operation. For example, I owned and ran my limousine service in a local market, before crafting a strategy to list every limousine company in the world, which I did on my very first website. I was able to attract revenue to the site, even in 1996 way before most online marketing strategies.

I discovered that marketing offline is not that much different than marketing online, and I have been able to harness that knowledge to produce impressive sales fast. Entrepreneurs need to understand, no matter offline or online, you have to develop a personal relationship that makes the buyer of goods and services want to buy from you, and not someone else, even the local guy down the corner.

The biggest mistake I see brick and mortar business owners make is their thought that online marketing is so foreign to them and they don't have the time to do it right. The truth is you can't afford to develop a niche marketing concept for your business, no matter what product or service you sell. If you don't, somebody on the other side of the world might be stealing your customers tonight!

Open your mind and work on developing a niche marketing concept for your business. Invest just as much time in online strategies as you do in offline strategy, and you might find the online marketplace dominating your sales versus the offline sales.

Marketing

The entrepreneur is a risk taker, someone that is willing to take on a new venture, to mold it and make it something better than what others have, but even more so, an entrepreneur is constantly working to change or evolve the business.
[Read more…] about Marketing

Register Yourname.com to Build Credibility

Marketing, WordPress

Creating your website/blog with your domain(Yourname.com) will give you more credibility with your customers, investors, vendors and employees. You’re letting people know who you are, which creates a unique relationship, allowing them to trust you. By putting yourself out there, you are taking the brand of your business to a whole new level.

Using KirkTaylor.com(you will use yourname.com), I attract people who are curious as to what I am doing next. The same goes for new entrepreneurs as their friends want to keep up with what is happening in their life. Friends, family and fans will tell others when you put more detail into your site. You can’t help but become famous online if you just are willing to put yourself out there.

I have had my domain since 2000; however, I never really used it until recently. The reason is that I didn’t want to be the brand. Now, I am quickly finding out that was a huge mistake. I would struggle to establish credibility with my old sites. When people would visit they would often leave on the first page, but now, unbelievably, my bounce rate is running at less than 4/100’s of a percent! My writing is consistent with other content while adding the personal relationship. You can accomplish what you want using yourname.com in your website.

My other domains do not index as well, and now I have more credibility and a higher rank using KirkTaylor.com.

The offline marketing is easier as well when you can tell people that your name is your site. They won’t forget and are more likely to visit. They want to know more about you.

By now you should be ready to get “yourname.com” and register it now. I highly recommend using Namecheap.com to register your domain. The customer service has been fantastic, and once you get the hang of it, managing the domain is easy as well.

Before you do register your name, keep in mind that I am going to recommend a different web hosting company. You don’t need to buy email accounts, or hosting services from Go Daddy as we will be setting up your blog site elsewhere.

How to register yourname.com

To register the domain, click on Go Daddy and you will go to the front page where you can enter your name in the search box located in the upper right-hand corner. You will get either a result that your name is available or has already been secured by someone else. In the event it has been taken, there will be other suggestions to use different variations of your name.

For now, don’t be too picky, and select one that is as simple as possible. It is more important to take action and get on to the next step. If we need to, we can come back and review different variations of yourname.com later on, but we have to have a domain name before moving forward.

Once you have found an available domain, you will need to follow the checkout process which is fairly self-explanatory especially if you can find the “skip extras and proceed to check out the link.” We just want to get your domain registered right now.

You may want to consider one feature, however, and that is private registration, which hides your email address and personal contact information in public “whois” section. You will avoid getting a ton of spam by following this process.

Go Daddy allows you to maintain 100% ownership of your domain, as long as you are current on registration fees which are negligible. You always have the option to transfer the domain, point it to a different location, or even sell it to someone else.

Would you like to have your own blog? Check out my free WordPress blog setup here.

Information Marketing is great low cost startup business

Marketing

Information Marketing is an incredible business opportunity for anyone willing to make a long-term commitment to the implementation of their Business Plan if you even bothered to create a plan.

You don't have to spend a bunch of money launching an Information Marketing business, it doesn't take much, but it does require a ton of sweat equity, something that most people aren't willing to provide.

Information Marketing requires accumulation of knowledge on a particular product or service, recording the processes involved, and then packaging those processes, offering them for sale to others, exchanging money for your hard work.

Some people do extremely well, especially if they build their personal brand around their product, which requires working social media, creating content on your blog, and even making videos on YouTube. It is a tremendous amount of work.

Information Marketing is dependent on the sales funnel that works through things like Feature, Function, Benefits. And, then there is the tie down, and trial close to see if your customer is going to buy the product. You have to put the right process in place if you expect to land any reasonable sales in your system.

And, even if you do everything right, or think you do everything right, you still are at great risk to fail this time out. But, you should never look at a failure, as a permanent failure, only a temporary setback, as it is all part of the learning process.

I've personally failed at Information Marketing, as well as many other types of businesses, before and after massive success in my life. Don't take it personally, if you fail, just start over, you'll figure it out.

Information Marketing is a great opportunity because you don't need others to launch this type of business. You can do everything yourself until you get so busy, and are making so much money that you can't afford not to hire somebody else to work with you.

I used to think that I needed someone else to work for me to make up for my shortcomings, but to be brutally honest, that hasn't worked out very well for me. Going it alone has drawbacks, but a great benefit is you are responsible for your success and failure. There is nobody else to reward or blame. You own it all the way!

All you have to do to get into this business is to become an expert at something and deliver that expertise to others through Information Marketing strategies. It's a pretty simple idea that will challenge your tenacity to come through to the end. Do you have what it takes to build an Information Marketing business?

And, if you think you aren't an expert at something, you probably aren't thinking about all the brain-dead activities that we do on a daily basis.

Brain-Dead makes for great Information Marketing material

Brain-dead stuff is the stuff that you're an expert at doing, you don't even have to think about it, but I guarantee that there are a ton of people who have to think about what you dismiss.

Try writing a blog post about things that are stupid simple, and then put detail into the topic. Change up how you would do an activity to get a different result, and chances are you are going to find a great item for Information Marketing.

Wait, you're going to do research and find hundreds, maybe thousands of people who already wrote about your area of expertise. That's fine, but before you give up, look through their material. Did they put it together the way you think is correct? Probably not, and that's opportunity.

You might even be able to leverage their material to build even better Information Marketing material for yourself. Don't plagiarize them, but utilize their ideas, and make them better by explaining how you would do the procedure better. You could even give them attribution, especially if you are a superior product or service!

Probably the toughest part of an Information Marketing business is finishing your work. You have to deliver your idea, and then get the sale, because your audience needs your product or material. Close the deal!

Information Marketing is a very personal strategy, and you need to connect with your audience. Let them know who you are, and why you are doing what you do. Help them when you can, and get people to talk about how great you are. They are your best sales people in the Information Marketing business.

Are you getting into Information Marketing? Let me know, and let's connect!