Marketing Simplified

Tomorrow is the day my vote-getter for Movie of the Year comes out. The last martial arts movie by one of the Top 2 martial arts movie stars of all-time, right up next to Bruce Lee.

Jet Li is fearless and that’s what you should be as a sales and marketing player.

Anybody can be a chicken*snap*, as the wife would say, marketer or salesperson, but if you’re gonna go, be a player and GO BIG !

There’s one, single, solitary marketing lesson that we can all learn from Jet Li -

Simple.

My friend Adam McWethy is one of the creators of Card Golf. It’s a new playing card game that lets you play a round of golf with a deck (or two) of specialized playing cards.

I recently interviewed Adam on my Travelling Golfer golf blog.

Now we’re to the point that Adam and his team need all the advice we can give him about marketing his new product.

I’ve given him several ideas, he and his team have come up with several and now we want you marketers out there to give us your best advice.

You’ve all talked the talk, now it’s time to stand up and be counted.

Right here, right now, it’s time for the power of blogs, bloggers and marketing and sales blogs to be seen.

Adam’s watching the comments and will be monitoring them thru me.

Gimme your best ideas, contacts and tips for how he and his team can get this product into every golf shop, game store, coffee house and retail store before the Christmas shopping season.

About the time the Big ’80’s started, I started eating at Wendy’s as my favorite fast-food restaurant.

I spend hours on the road every day and still use Wendy’s as my #1 choice if I have to eat on the run. I’d rather not eat on the run, but averaging 3500-4000 miles on the road per month makes it impossible to sit down for lunch every day.

Revelation time - I like vanilla. It’s simple.

I’ve always wanted a vanilla Frosty. I’ve asked them several times over the years, but never gotten a decent response.

NOW they get vanilla, about 37 or so years after they opened their first store.

Why now ?

Did Dave hate vanilla ? I hope not, ’cause I really liked Dave and all that he stood for.

It’s for sure that they never looked at any of the comment cards I filled out over the years, or this would have come a long time ago.

It’s also for sure that they didn’t ask their customers what they wanted.

Or listen when they knocked on the door with their wallets open.

Hello to the ( lack of ) marketing department.

If you sell anything to the general public and you don’t have a system in place to ask them what they’d pay for and someone smart enough to interpret the results of the campaign, send me an email and I’ll be glad to set up a campaign for you and ask your customers what they’d like to buy from you.

Then we’ll sell it to them. Simple.

I’m just finishing reading The Irresistable Offer, written by Mark Joyner. It recently made the list of Copywriting Books You Should Buy, over at Copyblogger.com. That post, as of this writing had gathered in 21 comments, so it was a tremendous success in my book.

Brian and I debated the addition of the book to his list. Both of us had good points.

I still don’t think it belongs, but it’s up against classic books from marketing legends. Marketing mentors and sales legends, if you will.

Mark Joyner’s a great internet marketer, but I’m not sure he belongs with the others on the list.

The book mentions Domino’s Pizza ( are they still around ? ) WAY TOO many times. It’s full of one sentence paragraphs and double line spacing.

Looks like some of my blog posts !

However, the book definitely has some merits and is worth reading, if only for Appendix’s A & B, Selling Yourself In 3 Seconds Or Less and A Note To Salesmen.

The info contained there is some of the same keys that I’ve placed emphasis on in my soon to be released ebook that deals with getting people to say yes to your sales messages.

I’m in edit number two. One more after this, a little formatting and then an ecover and download page before I turn it loose on the world.

It’s been a while since I dropped some link leaks on the blogosphere and I’ve added a few arrows to my quiver of late, so I might as well share ‘em with you.

Link Leak has a great post that I agree with whole heartedly. I’m not the greatest salesman of all time and I have a few flaws, but I get by with being only good at some facets of selling because I’m great at a few others. Click thru for a great read.

And while you’re there, they also have some great info about how to make your industry less boring.

Another Link Leak is about what to do if you need to market yourself or your product, but don’t really like marketing or selling. Does the word ‘facilitator’ work for you ?

And the newest arrow in my quiver ( or feed in my reader if that hurts your brain ) is this Link Leak. He’s got a new book out and I’m thinking of buying it if he doesn’t send me a review copy. Hint, hint…

This particular post is all about B2B sites and their failure to convert sales.

He also has a post about the new rules for reaching buyers directly with PR.

Click thru and check these out and let me know which one’s deserve a place on the best Blog Roll in the blogosphere…..mine !

Photo above courtesy of Graffiti.

I just read, via John Jantsch at Duct Tape Marketing, a post at The Viral Garden about, what they called, The Top 25 Marketing blogs.

I don’t completely agree with their list, nor with the way it was compiled, but it’s a great start and I can use it to make new blog friends, learn and share a lot of content and grab some links.

Alexa is a rather odd bird and that was the first time I’d been to their website. Technorati canbe quirky, too, but if you know the right people, you can get good service.

Maybe if we used Alexa, Google, Technorati and any other service which is weighted towards my blog, to do this again. If not, I’ll just live with it and still be happy.

I did subscribe to the RSS feed while I was there and am going to give ‘em the 2 week trial to see if they stay or go. I’m betting they stay.

Click thru, read the post and let’s talk about this…er, on their blog, since they started this.

EDIT - Seems I’m not the only one who thinks Alexa data is not all it’s thought to be. The Blog Herald has a post that quotes Matt Cutts, a borned and bred Kentuckian like me, and he’s not any more enamored than I. Read it and let me know what you think.

My blog friend Bob Pritchett, over at Fire Someone Today, reminds me that he’s hosting The Carnival of Marketing starting today. Please, everybody please drop by and support Bob.

My blog buddy Mike Smock over at Maneuver Marketing Communique has written the best observation of sales people I’ve ever read.

In his post about the Three Kinds Of Sales Reps he detailed and spec’ed out those three groups as well as they could be done. You could use this for a blueprint, that’s how right he is.

Here’s a little snippet to entice you into clicking thru :

” Entertainers tend to be outgoing, gregarious, friendly folks who are likable sorts and fun to be around. They’re good at dinner, golfing, telling a joke, remembering birthdays, and the name of your fourth son. They’re not necessarily the sharpest tool in the shed but most of the time they know their products and they tend to be very loyal to their customers. “

If that’s not enough reason for you to click thru, how about this :

” Competitors like to win. Selling is a conflict for them with a winner and loser. They tend to be aggressive, sharp, serious, disciplined hard workers and students of their industry, competition and customers. “

That’s enough bait, now grab the link and read the whole thing. And somebody leave a comment and tell ‘em Mike sent you ! Please.

I just received a copy of a free ebook on email marketing and I’d like to pass it on to you.

My friend Matt Callen wrote it and it’s got some good info in it. It also has some branded links to several products. If you don’t like to click affiliate links, don’t click ‘em. If you don’t mind, go ahead.

He uses his link to services like Aweber, which is the autoresponder service we use to take care of our many lists. There’s also a link to his product, Instant PopOVER, which we use to create popups that give away products and capture names for our lists.

We have 29 sites/blogs and we have multiple lists with many thousand subscribers.

This free ebook will help you learn :

Why presenting the right offer the WRONG way will NEVER increase your email list and sales.

Why changing 1 thing in your marketing plan will turn one-time visitors into your best customers - Immediately!

How to generate more income from an itzy-bitsy list. And how to take that list to the NEXT LEVEL!

The single most important thing you must do to skyrocket your opt-in subscribers !

The “secret” that all top email and internet marketers have in common!

How adding one marketing tool can dramatically increase your opt-in rate by up to 10 times !

Some of the chapters include :

Why Your Site Needs An Opt-In Email List

The Top 10 Strategies To Fatten Your Opt-In Email List

How Using One Single Marketing Tool Can Skyrocket Your Email List By 500% !

Do This And Your Lists Will Make You Money … And Lots Of It !

Pages 7 - 9 in Chapter 1 will give you 5 ways to add subscribers and traffic to your blog, as well as build your list.

Chapter 2 should be required reading for all bloggers.

Chapter 4 is as relevant to bloggers as it is to list owners/newsletter publishers.

Chapter 5 has 10 rules that would work for bloggers as well as they do for list owners/newsletter publishers.

Chapters 6 - 8 are all about Pop-up’s and their uses. It’s also about Instant PopOVER and how it can be used to make you scads of money or create large lists.

Chapter 9 could be as informational for bloggers as it is for list owners.

Chapter 10 is a nicely done recap.

Do yourself a favor and download your free copy today and by tomorrow you’ll know more about lists and how to use them than any of your competitors.

That could be a good thing.

Download your free copy of the eBook ” Email Secrets Exposed ” by Right-Clicking HERE, and then selecting ” Save Target As…” from the drop-down menu.

As I continue to point you towards all the submissions I had for my turn as King-For-A-Day ( Host of The Carnival of Marketing ), I come to a fine post submitted by Scott Allen, who serves as About.com’s Entrepreneur Guide.

Scott wrote a fine post that will help you zero in and define your niche’s customer.

Click thru and you’ll learn how to :

Write out a profile of your “perfect customer”…

Find out what appeals to this person about your product or service…

Find out where can you reach this person…

There’s nothing better than a blog post that gives you a few, short, actionable steps that will help you improve your marketing. Great post Scott !