Is Your Website Serving Its Purpose?

Hey, it’s a fair question, don’t you think? You didn’t post it on the web to take up space did you? Of course not. You want it to deliver a message.

Hopefully, a very strong one. A strategic website’s core purpose is to serve, support, and sell. Now, some of the goals that you are trying to achieve will vary by company or organization.

Some of these goals may include selling products, sharing information, filling out a lead-generation form, downloading technology, picking up the phone, building credibility and more.

Well, to make these things happen, effective websites comes in all types of shapes, sizes, designs, and most importantly, technologies.

Here’s an amazing fact…by the time you finish reading this post, there may be 600 million+ websites on the Web. This can become a very scary thought for most internet marketers.

It’s enough to make marketers wonder, among all that website noise, “how will their websites be able to effectively compete on the World Wide Web?

Let me answer this question for you…YOU must have clear marketing goals and a solid website plan.  At the end of the day, the only constant with website marketing is change.

Website work is a “Gift” that keeps on “Given!”

The work is never finished.  This might seem like a weakness, in fact, the flexible and fluid nature of websites is their greatest strength.

They become the scalable solution (if done correctly) that can expand and grow to support a company’s expansion or “Bottom-line.” Websites truly serve a company or organization’s goals when they serve the people using them first….Whether you are putting together a website from ground floor or optimizing an existing one, some of my future post will shade light on best practices.

Now, you wouldn’t build a house without having a blueprint on site. It’s the same philosophy and it must be applied to building a successful website.

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Respectfully,


Jimmie Wilks, MBA
Managing Director, netMarketingToday.net
Skype: jimmie.wilks
Email: info@netmarketingtoday.net

PS: If you’re looking to generate more leads and sales check out this simple, yet powerful resource that is often overlooked, This Program will Help

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Know What You’re About When It Comes to Marketing

The title of this post probably caught you off guard didn’t it? LOL! Hey, it’s COOL.  What I’m referring to is the all-important “Elevator speech.”

Image result for elevator speech

That’s right the “Elevator speech,” you know, that quick explanation or description of yourself that you can give out real quick and in a hurry – in the time it takes to ride an elevator.

The reality is, you won’t find a lot of folks trying to hang around to listen to you explain who you are using the “Extended play” version.

Listen, people are busy these days, everyone has his or her list of things to do or accomplish just to survive, so the folks you connect with don’t have all day to “Lollygag” just to get to know you.

Excuse me, but I’m just keeping it real.

Image result for keeping it realAt the end of the day, you must know what to do, what you can offer a potential customer, and what you’re looking for, and most importantly, figure out how to express all of it in less than 30 seconds.

Can you do it?

Well, believe it or not, it takes a little practice. Who wants to sound like a robot? It never hurts to rehearse your elevator speech a bit before you start connecting with potential prospects.

Always remember that 50% of the term “Marketing yourself” is “Marketing” so do exactly that, and spin your speech so that you appear interesting, engaging, and intriguing.

Did This Post Help You? If so, I would greatly appreciate it if you commented below and shared on Facebook and Twitter

Respectfully,

Jimmie Wilks, MBA
Managing Director, netMarketingToday.net
Skype: jimmie.wilks
Email: info@netmarketingtoday.net

PS: If you’re looking to generate more leads and sales check out this simple, yet powerful resource that is often overlooked, This Course will Help (and is on Sale)

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A Minor Adjustment In Your Marketing Can Mean Big Bucks

OK, have you ever had dreams of making it “Rain?” Well, if you would like to do so in real life, through the art of marketing on or off-line, then you are in the right place, my friend. And guess what? I truly appreciate you stopping by!

Image result for make it rainAs always, before I get into it, I would love for you to take time out to “Like” and “Share” my page if you find it of value. I really try to avoid B.S. or hype jobs. It’s all about education. Hey, I learn and hopefully, you do too. It’s mutual.  Cool?

Let me start this off by highlighting a case study. It’s all about cracking the marketing code to start making the money you deserve. We all want this and believe it or not, making a few minor adjustments in your marketing approach can oftentimes produce this very outcome.

Check this out, about 30 years ago, a marketer named Joe Karbo placed a full-page ad in newspapers throughout the U.S. marketing a book called the “Lazy Man’s Way to Riches.”

It was all self-published information and it sold for $10 bucks at the time. It was 156 pages. Now, the word on the street during that time was that the first full-page ad used to test the sale and promote this book was recorded as a marketing disaster and complete flop. 

Could you imagine spending all of your #$%^& money on a full-page ad in the LA Times and getting zero orders! The average marketer would have probably threw up his hands and walked away.

Joe Karbo, didn’t do that. He was a master at marketing, and knew that his idea would work if he could simply crack the code.  Well, guess what he did? He decided to risk re-running the ad unchanged, except for one number in the subtitle.

Instead of “How to earn $50,000 a year the lazy way,” he just changed it to read “How to make $20,000 a year the lazy way.” …this small ad tweak worked. Orders for his books started falling from the sky.

And tweak produced one of the classic marketing campaigns of all time.  In essence, Joe Karbo “Made it Rain.”

He made hundreds of thousand of dollars from his ads, year after year, like clockwork. You are probably thinking to yourself, why did this one small change make such a huge difference in his marketing outcome? It’s simple. Most folks can only “See” what they can believe.

Think about it.

Back then, earning $5, 000 yearly was good money and considered an excellent salary.  Earning 10 times that amount – $50K annually – was such a huge amount of cash that it simply wasn’t believable. This was the main reason no one responded. But when he lowered the amount to a more believable amount, suddenly everyone began to “See” it.

You see, the title you select, the words you use to sell your products, the benefits your information offers, and the way it’s packaged will cause this to happen.

And, once again….all it takes is one small tweak.

Did This Post Help You? If so, I would greatly appreciate it if you commented below and shared on Facebook and Twitter

Respectfully,

Jimmie Wilks, MBA
Managing Director, netMarketingToday.net
Skype: jimmie.wilks
Email: info@netmarketingtoday.net

PS: If you’re looking to generate more leads and sales check out this simple, yet powerful resource that is often overlooked, This Course will Help (and is on Sale)

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Can You Really Make Serious Money Running a Online Website?

Hey, I appreciate you stopping by to check out what my latest blog is all about. If you find some value in the content, please “Like” or “Share” before moving on. This post answers the question, “Can you really make money online?”

I’m asked this  question all the time. The answer is always the same… “Yes!”

Image result for yes, i can

But, let me be very clear about this effort…. You must have a marketing game plan.

Making money online requires focus and a solid marketing game plan with a focus on a niche market.  Hey, I failed a few times trying to make serious passive income online before waking up and “Smelling the marketing coffee.”

For me, the best way to earn income online was selling a digital product.  All you have to do is simply create or find a digital product to sell, build a ‘sales page’ from which to promote the product and then use advertising or marketing strategies in order to drive more visitors to that sales page.

This is a very ‘hands off’ method of earning an income that will generate cold-hard cash while you’re sleeping – and you don’t even need to worry about delivering a product!

But, here’s the problem. It can become limited in scope. What I mean is, eventually, you’re likely to exhaust the market for your particular product and find that the cost of advertising will start to outweigh the profits from your sales.

You stop delivering value to your target market, you stop building relationships and at the end of the day, and you start getting discouraged.

“Don’t!”…

You just have to find your groove, your true passion. The Web is huge. Start building your own brand, build a big audience and then sell products that you are really interested in and proud of.

So, once again, can you really generate the same kind of passive income from a website? How long will it take? Let’s find out…

The Challenge

There are a number of challenges that make it harder to make a passive income from a website out of the starting blocks.

For starters, you’ll immediately find that the money you make from adverts like as Google Ads is not truly comparable to the money you can make from a digital product.  Ads will typically pay out a few cents per click and most of your visitors are not going to click them often.

This is especially true these days with so many people running ‘ad blockers’ and the like.

Another huge problem is that it can take a long time and a lot of work to gain a big audience on a website. You’re going to be competing with the rest of the web and many of the creators you’re going up against will have gigantic advertising budgets.

Huge marketing budgets……

The Strategy

But as with most things, the secret is to work ‘smarter, not harder’.

That means picking the right niche to begin with. By selecting the right niche to enter into, you will be able to avoid going up against huge competition (as you might do if your niche were something broad like ‘fitness’ for example) while at the same time ensuring there is enough of a demand for what you’re selling.

Choose a niche that has clear products to sell to a specific audience and one that will allow you to avoid the hugest competition.

The next strategy is to recognize that you need enough content to climb the ranks of Google and that this content needs to be high quality.

This is where it can be hard to keep your model ‘passive’ but the solutions are either to hire someone who will create the content for you, or to spend a while writing lots of content so that you can post it gradually over time.

Did This Post Help You? If so, I would greatly appreciate it if you commented below and shared on Facebook and Twitter

Respectfully,

Jimmie Wilks, MBA
Managing Director, netMarketingToday.net
Skype: jimmie.wilks
Email: info@netmarketingtoday.net

PS: If you’re looking to generate more leads and sales check out this simple, yet powerful resource that is often overlooked, This Course will Help (and is on Sale)

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Need Help With Marketing Resolutions for 2017? – Here You Go!

Thanks for stopping by to check out my new blog and first blog post for 2017. It’s not fancy, but besides that, I promise to deliver value each and every time you visit.

So, don’t be a stranger! This post was originally written by Direct Marketing News and If you like what you’ve read, I encourage you to “Like” and please “Share!” That’s if you find it of value.

Again, I appreciate you stopping by. So, let’s get into the blog post “Marketing Resolutions for 2017!”

Image result for marketing resolutions

The best way to predict the future is to create it

The best way to create the future is by evolving investments. With 2017 newly arriving, marketers have a chance to learn for their mistakes of the past year and begin strategizing about how money and time should be spent in the future.

Is augmented/virtual reality ripe for exploration or too rare to touch? How much personalization is too much personalization? When is it best to use intuition over data?

Marketing is an ever-evolving industry. And if marketers want to remain relevant, they should consider some marketing resolutions for 2017.

Whether the Customer is Right or Not, You Should Listen

The customer is at the epicenter of the entire marketing industry. Presumably, if you please the customer, success shall follow. The greatest way to tap into a customer’s experience is to think like a customer.

“Today’s consumer, or buyer, is incredibly reliant on digital channels as they navigate through a purchase process, and they expect instant access to information,” said Bruce Swann, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Adobe Campaign.

“To keep up with this empowered and always-on consumer, marketers need technology that goes beyond managing sales and leads, to one that helps manage interactions across channels; provides insights into what is working and where course corrections are needed; provides recommendations; is fully integrated with marketing to align sales and marketing efforts.”

In recent years, brands and marketers have taken the omnichannel approach to appease this multi-layered consumer experience.

However, as technologies advance and more platforms arise, the omnichannel approach may become more layered and more confusing. In order to best navigate these technological waters, listen to the customer.

Embrace Data

Over the past couple years, the importance of data has grown from a basic marketing trend to a necessary tool. From statistical trends, to analytical patterns, to technological shifts, data has the capability to expose marketers and brands to a seemingly endless trough of information.

However, despite the rising importance of data in marketing, there are still those who distrust the concept. If you happen to be one, 2017 is the year to let go of the pessimism and embrace data.

“We need to find ways to establish societal trust in how organizations operate in the emerging data-driven society,” said Sander Klous, partner at KPMG in the Netherlands, said in a report titled “Building Trust in Analytics.”

“The simple reality is that we are moving quickly into a world in which our behavior and decisions are heavily impacted by systems fueled by data.”

Learn Everything You Can About VR, AR

If there were a list of marketing words for 2016, augmented reality and virtual reality would have to be near the top. Over the past couple years, the concept of AR and VR have slowly been making their way into the marketing industry, with concepts such as interactive ads, 360-degree videos, and augmented retail experiences.

“It’s getting more interactive, more personal, and brands are humanized now more than ever, and the more they understand the more personalized and interactive the content is going to become,” said Darryl Villacorta, a social media strategist at Sprout Social.

While the VR and AR concepts still appear to be a few years away from truly integrating with everyday marketing; it is clear the trend is growing, so learn everything you can about it in 2017.

Integrate, Integrate, Integrate

With so many platforms and so much data, things tend to get lost in the mix. In order to maintain a focused approach, brands should consider integrating certain aspects of customer relations marketing.

“CRM must seamlessly support both sales and marketing requirements, which includes the ability to alert sales or marketing when something happens that warrants attention; a single accessible view of the customer/buyer; insights into customer/lead behavior throughout the journey, as well as what sales/marketing tactics are working; full funnel visibility into lead/buyer status,” said Swann.

Brands, in order to drive engagement, have and will continue to evolve so that social channels are managed alongside email, web, CRM and other channels managed by sales/marketing.

The Role of a CMO is Evolving, so Evolve With It

The CMO is now expected to lead revenue growth by almost 70 percent of CEOs, according to a report entitled, Connected Interaction to Power Brand: How Marketing is Transforming to Create More Connected Customer Engagement by CMO Council and Deloitte.

“Being a chief marketing officer is not even remotely the same role as it was ten years ago,” said Liz Miller, SVP of marketing for the CMO Council, to Venture Beat about the report. “Before, you were the chief branding ambassador — it was really more about advertising and the introduction of marketing as a formalized process.”

With the meteoric acceleration of all things digital, CMOs, per the report, were forced to evolve from simple creativity to full engagement with data, science and technology.

So to be a successful CMO in 2017, don’t forget everything you know, just understand there is more to learn.

Was this post informative or helpful? Let me know what you think in the comments below. Feel free to share this with others!

Respectfully,

Jimmie Wilks, MBA
Managing Director, netMarketingToday.net
Skype: jimmie.wilks
Email: info@netmarketingtoday.net

PS: If you’re looking to generate more leads and sales check out this simple, yet powerful resource that is often overlooked, This Course will Help (and is on Sale)

If you enjoyed this post “Need Help With Marketing Resolutions for 2017 – Here You Go!,” retweet and comment please!