Make money fast

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Imagine that the internet is a gigantic (and very deep)
pond, with hundreds of millions of fish in it. These fish
need food (products and services), and you need to be on
the pond and in your boat to catch them. You will need a
pole - a particular method of marketing, such as article
writing, pay-per-click advertising, or social networking,
and you will need lures - specific article submission
directories (Ezines, GoArticles.com, ArticleFinder. com) ,
advertising engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN), and or social
networks (Linked In, Myspace, Squidoo).

The first common mistake is trying to put a couple dozen
lures on one pole, and relying on that pole to catch enough
fish to eat. No matter how deep their line goes, or how
many good lures they have, they never get enough fish to
bite. We'll call this type of fisher the "Deep & Narrow
Fishers."

An example of a Deep & Narrow marketer would be to write an
interesting, informative and well-designed blog, updated
twice weekly for months, but to avoid promoting it on
social networks, optimizing the site for search engines, or
submitting the blog articles to e-zines or directories.

The second mistake is to throw out a few dozen (or more)
poles, each fitted with one or two small lures. Even with
all those poles in the pond, only a few of them get a
nibble, and these fisher will also eventually starve. Their
nickname can be the "Wide & Shallow Fishers."

A Wide & Shallow marketer would have short, minimal
profiles on several social networks, have a blog with only
a couple posts on it, and have a few dollars in a dozen
different pay-per-click campaigns.

The ideal internet marketing strategy will have a balance
between the number of poles in the lake and the depth of
each pole. In other words, you want your internet presence
to be both wide and deep. Your message, personality, or
link should be in as many locations as you can maintain a
meaningful, regularly updated web presence.

You want your message about your product/service to appear
in front of your potential customers as many times as
possible. But remember that people are MUCH more likely to
click on your link and consider your product/service if
they trust you and/or have received some kind of valuable
information from you.

In sum, creating a meaningful web presence where you build
trust and relationships with your potential customers will
result in consistent traffic and higher yield on your
investment of time and money. The best marketing makes the
customer want to come to you - instead of making you chase
the customer.

What are your next steps to a better marketing system?

1. Analyze your current marketing practices and determine
whether you are closer to a Deep & Narrow marketer or a
Wide & Shallow marketer. Do you tend to get consistent
traffic on your website? Are you active in social networks
like LinkedIn, or Myspace? Where could you use some
improvement?

2. Choose three ways you can either deepen or widen your
marketing practices to get more leads, more contacts and
more sales. Consider article writing, blogging, creating
a Squidoo page, adding a video to your Myspace page, or
widening your email marketing. Choose something you will
enjoy working on and find rewarding to complete.

3. Create an action plan with specific, concrete tasks that
will help you reach your goals. A daily to-do list with
tasks such as "check stats on pay-per-click, create new ad
for AdWords Account, etc." will be more effective than a
general list of goals for the week.

4. After 3 months of following your action plan,
re-analyze your marketing practices to see if you notice a
difference in your results. Depending on your findings,
re-adjust your marketing practices, create a new action
plan, and assess again after three months.