Electronic Word of Mouth
by
Joseph Dowdy
Copyright ©2011 Joseph Dowdy
Published by Joseph Dowdy at Smashwords
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Foreword
Here is what you will get from this book:
Gather more leads and more sales of your product or service.
Save time and effort using tested techniques.
Discover new opportunities to expand your business.
The purpose of this book is to show you how to use a tested, realistic and economical approach to bringing your products (books, t-shirts, etc.) and services (catering, accounting, etc.) to the Internet for sale, improving your online sales capabilities or for the purpose of gathering leads to turn into sales using the Internet.
In my experience in working with companies large and small, with large budgets and shoestring budgets, companies with the freedom to experiment and no freedom to lose a single sale, what I find is that most companies and entrepreneurs who can use this book are able to implement it if they consider it “time to market the business” instead of trying to “add” Internet Marketing to their business.
Once you have set everything up in this book which will take some time on your part (unless you hire someone out to do it for you), you will spend the rest of your life and the time you spend on your business increasingly integrating the Internet into your life and into the time you spend on your business. If you love the Internet and you love your business, then the two will continue to converge.
My inspiration for writing this book is that I have a big crush on entrepreneurs. I am one of those myself and I love that part of others. Running a business isn't a mystery to me as I have seen others do it, helped them to do it and I do it myself. I love every part of it. I have even worked for the Small Business Development Center at Santa Monica College to help entrepreneurs and businesses to compete in the California economy through coaching and training. I've also worked on year-long projects for some of the biggest names in information technology such as IBM and I've worked for really tiny operations. This book is an expression of my appreciation for entrepreneurs and business of all sizes.
I thank my wife for giving me the love and support necessary to make this book possible and for my 3-year-old daughter, Angelina, who provides inspiration for me to live out my years healthy and happy. I am blessed that they are in my life and this book will support me in providing for them.
Table of Contents
Part 1 – Multiplying Profits Using Internet Marketing
What is a Electronic Word of Mouth?
Let’s Make Lots of Money
Before You Get Started
Part 2 – Five Steps to Fast Profits by Midnight Tonight
What You Need Now...
Website Hosting
Domain Names
Website Sales / Squeeze Page
Pay-Per-Click (Google AdWords)
Part 3 – Five Steps to Profits for the Rest of Your Life
Blogging
Call-To-Action
Social Media (and Networks)
SEO
RSS
Part 4 – The MeshMarketer's Edge
The Money Involved
Testing…1…2…3…
Expand Your MeshMarketer's Edge into the Future
Part 1
Multiplying
Profits Using
Internet
Marketing
Chapter 1. What Is Electronic Word of Mouth?
Electronic Word of Mouth is what you get when you apply “mesh marketing” (regular marketing combined with Internet marketing) to your business. I will refer to this as “MeshMarketing” throughout this book.
MeshMarketing isn’t exclusive to the online marketing but this book isn’t a regular marketing book. This book focuses on how to use what works offline (using regular Internet marketing) and applying it to Internet marketing.
The reason for this is that I believe (unlike others who may try to convince you otherwise) that it is best to use Internet marketing as an expression of what works in your regular marketing strategies and perhaps invent new ones using Internet marketing. Others will try to convince you that you can “get rich quick” using the Internet but they never start with what you know and try to adapt it. They expect you to start with what they know to offer your product while neglecting what the customer wants and you can only know what the customer wants by starting with offline marketing (customer feedback, surveys, reasons for product returns, support, defects in manufacture, misleading product claims, etc.).
MeshMarketing uses the Internet to market a product or service or complete a sale or gather a lead (which all begin as offline methods). MeshMarketing can be any part of the process of a sale between the time the prospective customer is first exposed to Internet-based content (blog post, Internet video, Internet search advertisement, social media sharing, online reviews, etc.) originated by either a customer, interested party or the provider of the product or service to the time when the sale of the product or service by is made by shopping cart or lead gathering. Sometimes it’s just a shopping cart. Sometimes it’s just lead gathering.
In this way, MeshMarketing is a part of all of the sales process and is something that can be done completely by computer without direct contact with a potential customer or personally handling a sale and thus can be done 24/7.
Even if part of the process relies completely on the Internet, it is useful because the Internet has no “work hours” and thus can deliver its part of the sales process 24/7. It’s always on…creating new leads…helping the customer decide for or against…completing the sale…providing customer support…helping customers to market your product or service…
A MeshMarketer is someone who relies on this Internet-based part of the equation because anyone one part of this equation is something that is influenced by all other aspects of MeshMarketing and this interconnectivity is what MeshMarketing is about. As technology changes, each part of MeshMarketing creates pioneering methods of making a sale.
Is MeshMarketing an Art or Science?
Just like traditional marketing, MeshMarketing is the art and science of marketing as an art and scientifically surveying, testing and using all Internet tools to maximize profit in an efficient way. There are scientific aspects to the marketing such as number crunching but there are not artistic aspects to the scientific method of surveying, testing and using Internet technology.
Marketing is the drawing board and the Internet is your laboratory. Marketing does sometimes require a little testing and process planning, but overall, the marketing aspect is how to creatively use the Internet technology (writing ads, designing different layouts, changing a word or a sentence or paragraph in your sales copy, etc.)
So let’s break this down:
MeshMarketing is an art AND a science.
It takes creativity to find ways to appeal to people so that they will buy from you. Writing ads is creative. Designing ads is, too. You may need to appeal to mindsets that are foreign to you or just completely different than you.
Using a scientific approach of testing and experimenting with different methods to produce sales and measuring those methods while eliminating uncertainty, we can find the best way to multiply sales using the Internet.
Without both, it is not as likely that you will multiply sales. This book will teach you both.
Maximizing profits is key here.
If it doesn’t maximize profits, it isn’t part of the plan. Without maximizing profits as your motivating factor, you will waste time and money. If you aren’t making money then you are creating a liability. It’s OK if you want to use the tools in this book to make money from your hobby or from your main line of business. This book is for people who want to sell a product or service and make it their primary source of income. The tools in this book become an extension of what you are already doing to make money. If you're not already making money, it may be very difficult to guess your way into profits online, but there are fairly simple ways to quickly find out.
Efficiency is also very key here.
If it’s not efficient, it wastes time. Time is money as it is often said, so let's not waste money or precious time on things that don't work.
If you are trying to sell something on the Internet and you aren’t doing it in an efficient way, you are likely to not generate a profit or your profits will be minimal. The emphasis in this book is to just do what works and continually refine it so that you aren’t wasting your effort, time and money on things that don’t work. If it doesn’t work in a week’s time, it’s probably simply not going to work down the road. But if it does work, then it can be made to work reliably and that takes patience and time to continually refine success.
Surveying and testing is what you do if you are already entrepreneurial.
Since new tools are being created every day, you can imagine then that this means that you have a lot of surveying and testing to do before you maximize profits. Not so! With this book, you will learn how to quickly survey and test new tools.
This book will teach you how to use shortcuts without cutting corners and quality. This book will teach you the right way to do it or to at least give you a proven blueprint that you can use to supervise someone else doing the work for you. This book will not teach you how to take a pipe dream of selling your book or product and make it real; this book is for people who have a product that sells and they want to use the Internet to sell that product.
Most businesses today who use Social Media are only using it because they don't want to lose ground to their competitors who are already using it. This is very true because we are now at a time when people are becoming so competitive that they are using anti-competitive tactics; for example, a popular restaurant in Paso Robles, California, is listed on Google Maps incorrectly—if you follow the directions to the restaurant, you are taken to the front door of their competitor who probably hijacked their Google Maps info. What ways can your competitors mislead your customers into buying from them instead of you? If you have written a book, do you own the domain name? Is there anyone out there using your information to sell a competing book or product under their name?
Anyone without a plan for Social Media is likely to waste time experimenting and getting things wrong which means lower productivity or profits or simply losing money. It's easy to then think that social media is a waste of time and money. Is it really a waste of time and money if you just haven't explored what is available?
The Fundamental Mistake
The fundamental mistake that people make when they think about using Social Media or Internet Marketing or Google AdWords to sell their book on the Internet is that they get really big dollar signs in their eyes. You hear them agreeing with statements like, “It takes money to make money.” and they pull out their credit card and buy this system or that system or hire a coach to teach them how to make those dollars come to them. Their judgment gets blurred because almost all of the time the person who is selling the system or doing the coaching is not going to ask them the most important question:
“How many of these have you already sold?”
This question strikes at the heart of the matter. If you haven’t sold any of your product, then how can you possibly expect to sell them on the internet.
If you are going to use this system of using the Internet for marketing or advertising or sales, then you are going to multiply your ability to make those sales happen. But what if your answer to the question is zero? Well the last time I checked, if I could promise you that I could help you sell ten times what you have already sold and your answer is zero, then ten times zero is, well, ZERO.
BUT…
There are many people who have sold hundreds, thousands and even tens of thousands of e-books online and have made quite a bit of money doing that without first selling their book in person first; this is true.
I would never discount the possibility that you could write a book or create a product and then use this book to learn how to sell that book or product and make money from it. However, the days when people did this sort of thing were a “golden era” of niche marketing and unless you really have something unique, it's just not very likely that no one else is doing it already. When competition is plenty, then selling is harder. Do your research and you will know if you are the only one selling your book or product. If you are the only one or one of a handful perhaps, then you can use this book.
But what about these gurus and teachers and program sellers who claim to have made a fortune from the Internet just selling stuff? These aren’t all lies, are they? Well, let's look further into their claims.
On my blog, I wrote an article about one of these people who make a claim that your website can make $100,000 a year and yet this guy can only afford a clunky microphone headset and a crappy backdrop for his video on YouTube. He holds up pieces of paper saying “$100,000” and “$20,000” and it's just BS. If you go to his website, you'll see that he has three links to major media outlets; one goes to an actual interview with MSNBC and the second one goes to an interview that didn't take place but he tells you what he told the reporter and the third one goes to his bio on that site. And when you dig further into his site, you see that he has two people listed as part of his business: his lawyer (“The best offense...”) and (Can you believe this?) his mom! There's also this creepy music with a slideshow of this guy who wrote a #1 selling book...on Kindle...for $1.99??? If you go to my blog, you'll see who it is, but who it is really isn't as important as how easy it is to see how credible someone is. He does appear to have worked for Disney and he did write a book, but his claims and his credentials are questionable.
Many of these “Internet profiteers” have NOT sold anything other than their own programs and books. Just because they can show you a model (like the one in this book) doesn't mean that they have used the same model to make money. Or maybe their model is how they are going to make money from you. Their model may be valid based on one or two customers. Who knows?
This is not unlike the really old late-night infomercial by Don LePre teaching people how to make a fortune from placing proven ads in classified sections around the country to call in and leave their name and address to get something for free. The infomercial was selling you a product that would work to get you leads (which costs money) but not how to have a product that would turn those leads into sales.
The Internet is really no different; if you don't have a product that sells then you can't expect to make a fortune. How do you know that you have a product that sells? Well, how many have you sold already?
The same thing goes for people who think they can blog for a living when they don't even have an audience built yet to sustain the kind of income that blogging for a living demands. You have to start and build and then look at what you can do with what you've got.
Now there are two ways that people can make a fortune from the Internet without selling anything first. The first way is to write an e-book and market it (today this can only be done by using untapped niche markets on the Internet but these have been scoured almost completely by now; entire industries were built around this very thing and it's been all-but-depleted) and the second way is to develop a program of some sort that solves a problem such as using Social Media to make a fortune (or at least to make money like this book). If there is a lot of competition, then you can imagine that the money they make isn't as much. There is already a fierce and strong competition for these two ways of making money, so unless you have a rare untapped niche, you aren't going to make a fortune from the Internet.
My goal in writing this book is not really about making a ton of money as much as it is to show you how you can make money doing what others do to make that money. If you are going to write a book, then write a book and sell it, but don't write a book to think that writing the book will solve financial problems because it will not be written in the same way. It should be written well, of course, but not just to sell.
Often times, people who write these books or make these programs will make claims about how much money they make in each month but they don't tell you how much they paid Google for those ads or how much money they lost to affiliates (they don't disclose the expense but sell you on the income and don't mention the profit margin—why is that??). Some of them that I have seen on YouTube will hold up a piece of paper (the guy I mentioned before) and say this is the invoice they sent out for $100,000 in just one month but they don't show it close enough to the camera to prove anything and they mention no names and make the whole thing very unclear as to HOW you they are going to read your mind when they write the book.
If you want to see my resume (which includes who I have worked for), just go to my website at meshmarketer.com/resume/ and see my active and past client list.
What they also don't tell you is that for these really big six- and seven-figure launches they will pay someone to launch the program for them and help make the sales happen and that those people who do the launch get paid the really big bucks to make it happen. They will get well-known gurus attached to the project for a fee to use their list of contacts to do additional selling; the guru gets money and the one running the tech end of things gets money as well.
These people who claim that they have made over a million dollars selling one product are right, but these are also the same people who are paying out 3/4ths of that million in expenses. And yet, $250,000 in a two-week period is far, far better than nothing at all. That's more than what 90% of Americans make in one year after all. But if they had the secret to MAKING a product that will cause a million dollars in sales, THEN they would have a great product. But most of the time, they are selling you the mechanism for making the money and they leave the product up to you. In other words, they are not telling how to make a million, they are telling you how they made a million doing something that they don't teach you.
They don't teach you how to make the product for the launch, but they only teach you that you can DO a launch. What are the odds that they can teach you how to make a product that can make a million in sales on launch day? Wouldn't you already be selling it?
This book is very similar in this respect in that I am not going to teach you how to MAKE a product but I will teach you how to market a product that you already sell and increase your sales by 10 to 100 times your current level.
And this can be done by midnight tonight using the fast method or if you choose the slow method, it will take between six months and a year. Both of them require about the same level of financial risk in that one will take about $200 and the other will take about $100. If you do both, it will take about $200. No one else I have found will teach you this practical and realistic approach to multiplying your profits.
So what is realistic then? Well, let’s say that you have a book that you can self-publish and you have been able to sell copies of it face-to-face with people. That is really all you need to know that this book can help you to multiply sales by 10 to 100 times. If it's a really great book, then you'll probably sell more books here than if you just leave it to Amazon or with whomever is publishing it. Publishers expect you to market your book!
With the help of the Internet, you can expect to multiply sales of any product by a factor of 10 or 100 and maybe even 1,000. As far as increasing sales of your service, there is no doubt that you can get new clients. And yet you may be thinking that this sounds to good to be true, but it’s not.
There are many factors that will contribute to how many more times you can sell your product online. If you sell cars online, then obviously you need to take geography and population into consideration to multiply your leads; which will still probably not result in more than one sale per day unless you live in a big metropolis such as Los Angeles. Also, your number of sales is going to be different is you sell houses or yachts compared to selling ebooks. If your ebook is about money or love, then you are going to sell more than books about hot sauce.
So CAN You Make Money By ONLY Selling Online?
So, is it true that you CAN make a lot of money selling on the Internet without selling your product in person? Yes and no.
But let's look at this in a different way than whether or not you CAN because the answer is “Yes.” but why would it be “No.”?
Let’s say that you are going to find an investor for your company and so you have lunch with a venture capitalist and they ask you what you think the value of your company is right now. What would you base it on? They would help you figure that out by asking you about your assets, your income (sales of your product), your costs and your future products which will give them an idea of where you are and where you can go from there. Again, they will need to ask you how much you have made in sales because it says everything about how profitable your business is. When you say, “I haven't had any sales.” then your meeting will be much shorter and it will probably be over.
Or think of it this way: If you walked into the offices of J. Walter Thompson (one of the largest advertising agencies in the US and fourth largest in the world) and told them that you have been given a blank check to let them advertise your product; they are going to welcome you with open arms but they will certainly ask you some questions. One of those questions are going to be: “How many of these have you sold?” Now why do you think they would ask? One good reason is so that they don't have to guess at why someone would want to buy your product if you have been successfully selling it already!
They will want to know what you said to sell the product. This helps them to translate the perceived value of the product into a campaign so that they can make those sales happen. If you haven’t sold it yet, then they will have to start from scratch and maybe tell you that they will have to “test market” the product first. In other words, they will have to learn to sell it if you haven't yet. They need to answer these questions about how it gets sold and why someone would buy it and you should really have those questions answered as soon as you can.
Once you have sold your product to someone over lunch or maybe at the back of a room after you gave a talk at the front, then you will have an understanding of the sales process of YOUR product. There is a perceived value that you need to articulate; there may be several.
It's often been said that people buy on feeling and justify with logic; in other words, if they want to buy it and can buy it then they will and they'll use the logic to talk themselves into completing the transaction or coming up with the money so that they can tell others about the thing they bought. What the feeling or impulse is can often be related to your credibility (He's the top of his field!), the perceived value of the product (It will fix this for sure!) and their state of mind (Oh, this reminds me so much of my childhood!).
Your credibility is spelled out to people by looking at your website and the product show there for professionalism.
Their state of mind is unpredictable but if you use Google AdWords your ad can appear to them in the middle of their buying process and really tap into that state of mind that they are in a buying mood.
The good news is that the perceived value is something you have great control over.
Perceived value is whether your product appears as a solution or as a waste of money. They look at your credibility the same way. Either you are helping them to solve a problem or you are wasting their time. You either deliver or you don't based on perceived value.
Having a guarantee or return policy often helps to guarantee that the perceived value is unquestionable. I have a friend who adds a second product to the sale so that it increases the perceived value and, as a result, he rarely has any requests from people to get their money back.
People who buy a package to teach them how to sell on the Internet are getting a package to teach them about “sales” but not “selling your product” because they don't know your product. This often fails not because the package is teaching about “sales” in general but because the package doesn't dig into how YOU sell your product. This book is different in that regard and will help gear you toward ensuring that your product is sold.
People who hire a coach had better get a coach who digs into how it is that their product is sold. If not, then there isn’t going to be much return on investment for that package or the training. This is a case where spending money to make money is spending money to lose money if you're just getting a book on “sales” per se. You need a package to teach you how to sell YOUR product.
Getting Down To Brass Tacks
So, how many of your product have you sold? Do you know what need your product met for the customer? What is the perceived value? Has the product ever been returned and, if so, for what reason? If someone did not buy the product, what was their reason?
This is what you need to know before you can realistically expect the Internet to multiply your sales.
You can design your ads and articles to address THEIR reasons for buying rather than your reasons for selling. This will draw them in and get them interested and it will help them to make a choice based on their feelings about your product and you and the method by which you are selling.
Get out a piece of paper and answer these questions in the next paragraph. You will need these answers to help you write ads and articles to help you with your Internet Marketing efforts.
What are all the reasons that someone would buy your product or service? What are THEIR reasons? What are reasons that you would never believe? What reasons would someone have to return your product? What reasons would someone have to report you to the Better Business Bureau? What reasons would the Better Business Bureau have to rate you as a risk? Again, why would someone want to buy your product or service?
If you don't yet know what reasons they would buy your product, then you'll soon learn. The good news is that these things can be learned as you progress in the development of your Internet Marketing strategy.
As you develop your Internet Marketing strategy, you will gradually add more to your site. When you continue to add more to your site, you will avoid the impression that your site is just some “fly by night” purchase which people tend to avoid. Your website needs to say “money” and if it doesn't then you're just putting up a placard that says “Lemonade 5¢” and then you sit and wait.
You must have an Internet Marketing strategy that looks like you are successful at what you do and that will help to make the sale happen outside of the factors that helped you to sell your product in person. You are now ready to amplify and multiply what works about your product using a sales, advertising and marketing medium called Internet Marketing.
Sales, advertising and marketing form an acronym: SAM. You need SAM to multiply your sales.
SAM the Sales Man
You must keep in mind (no matter what you may think as you read this) all methods in this book are like a person named SAM (Sales, Advertising and Marketing). Every page on your website or blog is like a salesperson named SAM carrying billboard, radio and TV commercials and forms and materials to either generate a lead or make a sale. Whatever status updates, messages, articles, ad copy or posts you write are what SAM shows on your blog or Twitter or Google AdWords ad. Each are like throwing dice as to whether or not they will bring you money or to get a sign-up which leads to a sale.
And it’s super-important to remember that all forms of sales, advertising and marketing come with risk. If your product is one that no one wants, your chances of not making a profit are nearly guaranteed.
But even if you have a great product that everyone wants, it's not going to matter as much if there are too many competitors. Just try opening a fast food hamburger restaurant between a McDonalds and Burger King and see how well you do.
Also, your price may be too high or your marketing may be offensive. For example, when Chevrolet marketed the Chevy Nova in Mexico, they didn’t realize that in Spanish that Nova roughly translates as “no go” and so Mexicans didn’t want to buy a car that is a “no go.”
Let’s put this as bluntly as possible:
“All sales, advertising and marketing is a form of gambling.”
If you opened up a hamburger restaurant between a McDonald's and a Burger King and you served gourmet burgers, amazing french fries and all with a twist that was appealing to your demographic, then you may do quite well. If you were a celebrity or a chef, then your chances would be even higher of doing well. If your food began to win awards and receive a lot of media coverage, then your chances of doing well are even better! You may do so well that you begin to open more hamburger restaurants in a chain and, well, the sky is the limit!
You can win big or lose big. If your gourmet burger and fries does extremely well and then someone dies from ptomaine poisoning then it won't matter how many stores you have opened, they will probably all suffer in terms of sales as a result of such bad news.
But if you get by on your sales now, then there is sufficient proof that you can always do better and that’s the really good news. If you can’t get by on your sales now, then you really need help that is beyond this book. It is true that some sales are well-geared for niche markets on the Internet and the people who specialize in turning niches into money can teach you how to do it, too, but it's a really big gamble. But think about it: if these guys selling you these programs to make you rich had a real product, wouldn't they be trying to make money off of someone who isn't trying to get rich? Isn't this especially true for the programs that teach you how to find niches that are easy to exploit?
Google AdWords Is Run Like a Casino
Google is run like a casino because they never lose and you are risking your money to gain money and you may lose all your money in the process.
Just like a casino, you can get cleaned out. If you load up your Google AdWords account with money and don't make a single sale, then you have just been cleaned out as if by a casino. There are no guarantees and Google will not give you your money back.
Just like a casino, Google will provide you with “virtual money” by popping a coupon code in the mail to you to get you to use their money (which can never be used for cash and only in their system by you). They know that after you have gone to the trouble to get yourself to the craps table (errr, the Google AdWords campaign manager), that once you have lost their money (coupon) that you will put a little money of your own down.
Just like a casino, Google rewards its “high rollers” (the ones who spend the most money). They send trinkets with the Google logo on it as a “reward” for loyal patronage at their casino (errr, yeah...casino).
Just like a casino, there are people who will teach you how to gamble your money with Google AdWords better using a “system” as it is often called. You can learn how to properly play the odds, build a better poker hand and they give you enough information that your risk of losing money is lowered considerably (at least so they say). But if you are a crappy gambler and are reckless and not scientific, you're still going to lose money.
Just like a casino, the house (Google) will teach you how to gamble as well. They provide you with a ton of online training materials so that you can properly (supposedly) set up your campaigns, understand why the house rules are the way they are (they reward certain types of marketers and punish others) and maybe, just maybe they teach you a few things that will help you win more money.
Just like a casino, the house (Google) will stack the deck against you any way that they can by relying on human nature to stuff profits in their pocket. Really? Yes. Here's a great example: Even though in their detailed training, Google says in the first words of their “Content Network Optimization University : Campaign Set Up” YouTube video, “When setting up a new campaign, consider one for search and one for content.” it is completely inconsistent with their default settings when you open up a Google AdWords account. You have to intentionally change their default settings to separate them which Google AdWords professionals have known for quite some time. (I have addressed this in my instruction for AdWords you will see later in my step-by-step setup) Want another example? Google Analytics is at least 24 hours behind real-time; Google's use of your money is based on things happening much faster than 24 hours and they aren't about to let you tweak things as fast they can. Want another example? Let's say that you have a 5% conversion rate and you spend $100 a day and you decide to shut off your Display Network settings; do you know what will happen? You will still pay $100 per day but your 5% conversion rate will be 0% and so you will lose more than $100 per day; why is that? There can only be one answer and it's simply that Google wants you to pay dearly for shutting off Display Network. It's like a casino using a little muscle to get what they want.
Just like a casino, Google is happy to overwhelm you with all of their choices, but will not come out and tell you what NOT to do when you try to do it. You get no warnings or cautions or notices; you are forced to learn by expensive trial and error unless you can intuitively know from their training something that isn't spelled out; they never say “DON'T DO THIS.” And there are a number of settings that they don't want you to touch that can make you more profits once you understand them. I cover this later, but there is a big difference between running your ads optimized instead of rotated; you will lose money running ads rotated if you do it at first, but it should be done every few months after your campaigns are ready for it. The option is there but they don't spell it out to you WHEN to use it because using it at the wrong time can cost you and they would prefer that you let them run everything on the default settings. Again, they aren't afraid to hurt you where it counts if you decide to do your own testing.
Just like a casino, Google AdWords could be run in such a way that you never get cleaned out. They make so much money that they could just give you the option to let them run your campaign and charge you 30% of your gross, but that would be like a casino guaranteeing that you won't lose all your money and that will never happen.
Just like a casino, Google AdWords can be very addictive. I've seen times when AdWords users get dollar signs in their eyes when AdWords is really working and they want to keep making changes instead of focusing on what is working. It's sad to see that happen.
Just like a casino, Google AdWords can make you a lot of money really fast if you have a great product and all of your MeshMarketing is in place properly.
Why MeshMarketing Is Like Gambling But With Lowered Risk
Approaching MeshMarketing from a testing mindset, we can take what you have and make improvements instead of wild guesses. When you have wild guesses, invest a little bit of money and see what the return is like. If it works, then put a little more money behind it and start diversifying your winning strategies.
Did you create a successful ad? Try running the same ad in other ad groups (with changes that fit the keywords in the new group).
Did you think of a new keyword that works? Try putting that keyword into other campaigns with similar ads.
Find what works and then use it elsewhere. Don't put all your money on one hand.
Stick with what works based on your in-person sales. Don’t make the wild-eyed mistake in thinking that you need “different” sales, advertising and marketing to make money online; if you can’t sell it in person, then it's likely that you just can’t sell it on radio or TV, either.
Internet Marketing, social media and MeshMarketing are no exception to that statement; if it doesn't sell there, it's just highly unlikely that it will sell here.
This is a sober approach to making money and not some all-or-nothing winner-take-all Wild West system.
Your sales, advertising and marketing (SAM) should be informed on what you learn as you go.
SAM can't sell ice to an Eskimo or sand to a surfer.
SAM can make you money or lose your money. It's a gamble.
You can either pay a consultant to do what SAM does or you can do it yourself. But either way, if money is lost, it’s your money and you have no one to blame but yourself. You are the only one who can make SAM lose money or make money.
But on the other hand, if SAM is good at what he does (if you have a product that sells), then you can make enough money to quit your day job! But don’t put all your eggs in one basket and expect SAM to make you rich overnight. Remember that whatever you sell can be sold by others and your competition can drive your profit margin way down.
Whatever you are expecting SAM to sell has to be what people want and it has to be an offer that gets people to buy (a sale, membership or partial-payment) or at least get people to take action (sign-up or provide contact info).
If you can’t sell the product yourself, it is completely unrealistic to expect SAM to do it or to hire someone else to help SAM do it. It would only be a fluke if you could successfully get someone else to sell a product that you can’t sell.
One-Stop Shop
This book is a one-stop-shop for the way in which Internet Marketers do their jobs and you will learn how to do what they do without all the trial and error that goes into mastering Internet Marketing by yourself. Many of these tactics are used by Internet Marketers as a whole, but some Internet Marketers don't use all of them and this is because not every product sold on the Internet is perfect for each tactic.
This book is for all levels: beginning, intermediate and advanced. If you are advanced at Internet Marketing, then you probably don't need this book but you may learn a thing or two anyway. Most Internet Marketers don't focus on sales first because most of their clients don't, either. Any Internet Marketer wants business, but they also don't want their clients (who don't understand what they do) to become discouraged by hearing things they don't want to hear (such as “Why are you doing this if you haven't sold any of these in person?”).
You can consider yourself intermediate-level if you use WordPress or Google AdWords already. If you are intermediate-level already, then you will learn how to expand what you know into a full-blown picture of success in terms of Internet Marketing.
If you consider yourself advanced in terms of Internet Marketing then my experience that I share with you here will help you to expand what you do and not make the same mistakes that I have made.
If you have a book, product or service already that sells, then you have everything you need to start using all the tools in this book. If you don’t have a book, product or service—or one that sells—then you should really go create something and sell it a bit first (even just a little) and then come back to do this. Go to a networking event and sell your product to at least one person and find out what you can about the process that led to that sale.
With Internet Marketing, the hardest thing is to get people who don't understand Internet Marketing systems to be able to look at a situation and say, “Imagine if we did this.” because they draw a blank stare and don't get it.
If your Internet Marketer doesn't want you to make more money than you spend on their services, then you need to tell them to start focusing on that and then listen to their suggestions and try them. Otherwise, just use what is in this book and you'll be off to a great start.
You may certainly be able to use the Internet to help test-market a product or service, but you will need to give yourself as much freedom as possible to fail at your test-marketing before thinking that this book can't help. If you have some money for Google AdWords, you can find out in a month how to turn your investment into a profit (unless there really is no demand for your product). It will only take a few days of running ads to know what's really going on. If you have no money for social media, then just use what's in this book and you'll do fine.
Two Essential Questions
Any form of marketing, whether it is multi-level-marketing, pay-per-click advertising or any others have two things you need to watch closely: How much does it cost before you can start making money on it and how likely is it that you can consistently turn a profit? These two things (start-up cost and likelihood of consistent profit) are by far the most important things when it comes to considering a career, capital venture, self-employment, service-for-hire, patenting-and-manufacturing or any other way to make money. “How much do I need to get started?” and “Will I make money?” are the questions you need to answer before you can commit if you have your wits about you before you say yes to anything and MeshMarketing is no different.
“How Much Do I Need To Get Started…?”
MeshMarketing is almost free (probably less than $10 in terms of initial investment). At a minimum, you will need to buy a domain name and the rest can be done for free if you have plenty of time to work for yourself on it. You can spend a little extra to either save time or give your online presence a more professional look.