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This episode of the Entrepreneur’s Journey Podcast (RSS Feed) contains an interview with Kevin Muoio. Kevin is the co-owner of iPod My Baby and iPod My Photo, two e-commerce websites selling iPod related merchandise.

I first heard about Kevin from the podcast interview he did with Andru Edwards from Venturus. In that interview Kevin talked briefly about the blog marketing he did for his websites and that the majority of traffic (and subsequent) sales came from blogs. What made it really interesting though was that he in fact didn’t operate a blog himself, he used other people’s blogs to promote his business.

At the time of our call Kevin had only spent $100 on marketing for his business, and that was for some pay per click advertising, his blog marketing efforts have been completely free. Blog publicity outperformed some significant mainstream media coverage Kevin’s websites received so I really wanted to hear more about how exactly he was using blogs to market his business. I decided to call him up and ask and of course I recorded everything for a podcast so we all can learn from Kevin’s techniques.

This podcast has some great current advice on how to use the blogosphere to create buzz and market a business without spending a cent. It very much parallels traditional PR or press coverage marketing but because of the nature of blogs and bloggers you face a lot less resistance to access communication channels. Blogs enjoy significant online network effects so a successful blog marketing campaign can result in exponential exposure for a website business. It’s a marketing technique that every business should take advantage of.

I hope you enjoy the podcast.

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I’m trying out the original and oldest blog carnival, the Carnival Of The Vanities, by submitting my article Online Marketing Outside The Box.

This week the carnival is held at Baboon Pirates, where El Capitan will guide you through a range of all kinds of interesting blog topics, and not just business topics, the Carnival Of The Vanities is an eclectic carnival.

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Yeah, that sounds like a sales spiel doesn’t it? Well it is, but I wanted to tell you about a deal that Perry is currently offering that is only on for another week. I just made the purchase myself and I don’t buy unless I know I’m getting a fantastic deal, so pay close attention.

* * * UPDATE * * *

It appears Perry didn’t stop this deal at the end of October as was advertised (why am I not surprised) so you can still pick up this package at the low intro price. I’ve been reading through the materials and it’s quality. It’s not just for online marketers, for example he sends you some reports on how to land a job using direct marketing and how to market any business (offline too) when you have no budget (using email, press and joint ventures - all good stuff). I don’t think you will be disappointed if you take up this offer, I wasn’t.

* * * * *

Until the end of October, for about one more week, you can purchase membership to Perry’s Renaissance Club AND you will get his Definitive Guide to Google AdWords E-Book thrown in as well.

(I like to stay as transparent as possible whenever I recommend someone else’s products so I’ll let you know right now the links below include my affiliate ID, if you decide to buy I get a percentage of the fee - I appreciate the support for my blog).

This is a good deal for several reasons.

1. Normally the AdWords e-book sells for a minimum of $49. Renaissance Club Membership is only $29.95 per month, which you can unsubscribe from after one month if you don’t want the additional materials and support from Perry. No matter what you do you get the AdWords e-book for immediate download. At worst that’s the AdWords Definitive E-Book Guide for only $29.95, a saving of $19.05 off the standard price. But wait, there’s more…
2. Perry is throwing in the AdWords e-book as a bonus, it’s an additional product tempter to convince you to do what he really wants you to do - join his Renaissance Club. He’s thrown in a bunch of additional bonuses to further sweeten the deal.

   I’m not going to repeat the entire sales letter, you can read that for yourself (it’s not one of those super long ones either, so don’t be afraid), but here is a quote:

   Extra Free Bonuses

   Get Hot New Material from Jay Abraham’s Power to Profit Seminar, with 5 CD’s, 5 Special Reports, and an Arsenal of Tools, Strategies and Support each and every Month - So You Outsmart, Out-Maneuver and Outsell Your Competitors in 2005 (Oh, and you also get the whole Dilbert Cube Escape Story on MP3)

   These are the guys providing the materials - Jay Abraham, Ken McCarthy, Perry Marshall and Brad Fallon - and the material comes from a Special Seminar on The Dynamics of Internet Marketing in 2005 that they did together recently. Now to be honest I don’t know and have never heard of Ken, but I know Jay Abraham (he’s at the top of the marketing gurus hierarchy - my mate Will Swayne would have Jay’s baby he loves the guy so much), Brad Fallon (top of the search engine optimization tree - I read his stuff and have done some of his courses too) and of course Perry, the expert in AdWords and the main reason why I signed up for this deal - to get his updated AdWords e-book.

   Click here to read more about the additional bonus resources.

3. For me the best reason was to get the UPDATED VERSION of the Definitive Guide To Google AdWords E-Book. It’s been updated with new instructions on how to get the best results from Google’s new site-targeting feature in AdWords. I’m going to write more on site-targeting once I’ve had a play with it, but let me tell you why I’m so excited about it.

   Google site-targeting lets you choose the specific websites that your advertisements are placed on (the websites have to be using the Google AdSense system to place the “Ads by Google” on their site). This is perfect for businesses, like my own BetterEdit.com, that offer a service that people don’t very often go looking for. People only realise they could use the service after they are exposed to its potential. With site-targeting I can test out text and banner advertisements on a whole range of websites that I suspect have an audience that is my target market. I don’t have to negotiate deals with the site owners and I can test on literally hundreds of sites until I find the best performers.

   I plan to make extensive use of Google AdWords contextual search advertising and site-targeting in the coming months. I want to make sure I know what I am doing from the start with the latest updated information. Hence I want a copy of the updated version of the e-book. Perry’s old book from about 6 months ago doesn’t include any information about site-targeting, since Google didn’t offer it yet. The updated version also includes new content on the recent changes Google made to the AdWords system, including the new active/inactive keywords and minimum bid requirements.

   I want the best and latest up-to-date information on AdSense, hence I decided to buy the book. The additional materials Perry is throwing in is icing on the cake, the cheaper than regular price, well, that’s the deal breaker for me.

As you can do doubt tell I recommend you take advantage of this deal just like I did. It’s only on for another few days so if you plan to use Google AdWords, already do or had this book on your “to-buy” list for the future, there has never been a better time to take action, get educated and get started.

Get your bonus copy of the Updated Definitive Guide To Google AdWords E-Book by Perry Marshall and the 5 special reports and 5 CDs from Jay Abraham’s Power to Profit Seminar - Click here to get your Renaissance Club Membership.

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In my previous article discussing how to build email lists I made mention of the technique known as the namesqueeze. The namesqueeze is a method online marketers use to subscribe targeted prospects to their email lists by forcing visitors to a website to join a list or subscribe to a newsletter before they gain access to the main site content. A few readers made comment about the namesqueeze technique, noting that they dislike it and will usually leave a website rather than supply their email address to enter the website. I tend to agree that I do not like the technique looking from the eyes of a web surfer, it annoys me, however I have on several times submitted to the namesqueeze and most often when I find the sales copy really compelling – it’s seems to offer the scratch to my itch – and of course it’s an emotionally compelling choice, which truly good sales copy can elicit.

Another common gripe I hear often and experience myself is the hatred of the long sales page. I’m sure you have come across one of these. They require at least ten or more full screen scrolls to reach the bottom of the page, they are littered with large text, giant red headings, many testimonials with pictures of smiling people, lots of tick arrows listing all the amazing things the product will do for you if you decide to buy. I hear complaints about the multiple “P.S.” and “P.P.S”s at the end of sales letters, that it’s annoying when a webpage audio starts talking to you automatically without requesting it and that ultimately, sales letters are just too painful so no one must be silly enough to read them all the way through, let alone make a purchase.

Now I could explain to you why the long sales letter works. I could note that often people scroll to the end of the letter and read the “P.S.”s first hence they are very important. I could describe how testimonials are the social proofing necessary to convert a sale or how automatic audio has been proven to increase opt-ins. But my goal with this article is not to educate you in online marketing techniques. I want you to get into the marketer’s mindset and out of the consumer’s mindset. Then I want you to switch back to the consumer mindset and finally do something completely new, I want you to think outside of the online marketing box.

A Marketer’s Dilemma

Here’s a problem from my point of view. As a person interested in online marketing I visit a lot of sales pages and look at them through the eyes of a marketer. I don’t read most of them, I scan and take note of the marketing techniques they are using. Because I’m overexposed to these techniques the long sales letter is probably not going to be a good tool to sell to me, at least not as good as it has been in the past. However I don’t think the same could be said about the general marketplace since techniques within the long sales letter draw on marketing methods that have been proven to work over and over long before the Internet was created. I’m not saying I won’t be impacted by a long sales letter when I fit right into the niche they are targeting, I’m just saying that it takes more, a lot more, to convince me to make a purchase. Some of you reading this article are probably the same.

As marketer I must remind myself that I am not my client. If I want to maximize my return I need to consider all the tricks in the book, regardless of my personal preferences or assumptions as a consumer, and see what my target market tells me. If the market responds better to automatic audio and large fonts then am I crazy if I choose not to use them because I personally don’t like them. This is what marketers will tell you, you must get into the marketer mindset and respond only to what the market tells you. Nothing else matters. If - and this is an important if - your goal is to maximize return as a marketer you must be prepared to leave all your subjective personal preferences behind and become a statistics machine that cares only about the numbers.

Once you are in that mindset your next step is to attempt to become your customer. By entering the consumer mindset you can develop your marketing toolbox based on the expected behaviors and desires of your target buyer. This is of course very closely tied into the marketer’s mindset since as a marketer you test your consumer mindset assumptions using marketing mindset methods (are you confused yet?). A skilled marketer can make use of both mindsets simultaneously.

However, and this is an attitude you are not going to hear from almost any other online marketer because it goes against the definition of marketing, if you have set yourself goals that don’t necessarily demand maximization of return, then you can be more selective with how you sell. Let me explain.

If you choose to apply your own personal preference when marketing, to not to use large fonts, or hyperbole copy, or even avoid the sales letter altogether, because you don’t like these methods or it’s “not the type of marketing you want to use,” you must be prepared to experience a lower return and response rate. You must be prepared to under-optimize, to not care solely on profit maximization. By choosing not to implement certain sales techniques you are going against the grain. You might be labeled stupid. You might not make as much money, however you might feel better for not being yet another person with a webpage that reads like a late night infomercial (although would you feel even better with more sales?).

Choose To Be Different

I’d like to put forward the argument that by not committing to certain accepted marketing “best practices” and worse still, to not even test these methods out of personal principle (what kind of a marketer are you!) that you may force yourself to think out of the box and come up with unique and innovative marketing tools. You might fall flat on your face too.

You could argue that developing unique and innovative marketing methods is just part of what being a marketer is about. Perhaps the best and revolutionary marketing methods were developed because the inventive marketer was sick of seeing the same sales pitch copied and pasted into each different niche. The market may have become saturated and the only path to success was to be different. The end result thus turns out to be a greater return than was possible from any of the standard marketing methods, and in time the new innovation becomes the norm (and the cycle repeats). In essence the end result was exactly what marketing is about – maximization of return – the marketer though may have just set out to be different.

Creative Marketing

Is it possible to be a creative marketer purely for creativity’s sake? A marketer that wants to use marketing as a medium of expression, to be different, yes – still to make money – but focused more on creativity than profit maximization. People may argue that choosing to be creative IS really choosing to maximize profits. Others may not call this marketing at all, since the goal is not aligned with income maximization. Maybe it’s “branding” or “advertising” or “art”?

I didn’t write this article to suggest that you don’t use proven techniques. I don’t suggest you attempt to make a stand by using only new marketing methods because of “principle”. You might go bankrupt, and I don’t want to see that. Most online marketers do really well simply copying methods that other marketer’s have developed. Why try and reinvent the wheel when the wheel has proven to work time and time again. You can still enjoy tremendous financial success and personal satisfaction without ever being a creative marketer. Perhaps creative marketing is an oxymoron - is marketing more science than art afterall?

The purpose of this article is simply to remember that innovation comes from people that choose not to follow the crowd. In marketing and in business that is a hard thing to do because you risk reducing your income. For those that perhaps have aligned their goals away from profit maximization, or have already reached financial security but still enjoy marketing, the opportunity exists to do something different and the first step is to think differently.

Yaro Starak
Online Marketer

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The PageRank update (learn about PageRank) has been occurring over the past 24-48 hours. My friend Alborz, who manages the MyWeblog free blog hosting service has been jumping up and down with glee as his blog went to a PageRank 5. Regardless of what you think about PageRank, an increase can really put a smile on a webmaster’s face.

The webmaster over at MSN.com might not be too happy however because presently it appears that the site has fallen from a PageRank of 9 to a PageRank 2. Speculation is rife that Google has done this deliberately as a slap in the face from one web giant to another. The SEOChat forums are discussing the topic right now.

I hope PageRank was good to you today!

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