Kelly Smith Marketing » lead generation

Crazy Dog or Internet Marketing Discussion?

Kelly Smith — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 01:08:21 +0000

This is a funny video of a dog who attacks his own foot, thinking it is trying to steal his bone. I got this link from YouTube from a suggestion offered by my Full Sail course.

But I am including it here because I think there is a valuable lesson here. At first blush it seems rather silly for a Dog to attack his own foot. Doesn’t he know what his own feet are doing?

But if you compare this dog to a company where the parts of the dog are compared to different parts of the company, very interesting parallel arises. I presume that most people would think that the head of the dog is the president or CEO. Maybe the feet are the salespeople and the tail is the accounting department. It really doesn’t matter to me which part of the company is compared to what part of the dog.

What interests me is how many times I have seen companies fight among themselves, internally, even though they’re after the same goal.

There’s all kinds of analogies we could make here including comparing fights between sales and production, accusations of those who want to take all the credit, differences in philosophy between marketing and accounting, etc. and believe me, sometimes those fights are far more vicious than this dog’s teeth.

The goal of any company needs to be to gain and keep profitable customers. Profits alone cannot suffice. A company that only has the narrow goal of profits will cut short much-needed plans and activities to maintain a customer’s return. A company that only produces products just to maintain production will lose profitability.

But every company needs to have a heart and soul associated with it so that reaching the goal of getting “the bone” can be shared by every member of the organization. When everybody understands the marketing plan of the company, proper communication can take place and everyone may know their value in the company and can thus contribute greatly to profits

Ethics in Internet Marketing

Kelly Smith — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 12:11:58 +0000

Ethics in Internet Marketing

Universities that teach Internet marketing programs require you to sign a Global Professional Standards (GPS) form. One of the most important items of this professional standards agreement is that you won’t plagiarize what other people have written on the Internet. If you want to sell an affiliate product or do something with Google Adsense you may have purchased an Internet marketing program from some of those big-name gurus. I don’t need to name any names here, there are too many to list.

But almost everyone that I’ve ever seen who claims to be a guru in this industry teaches people to write articles to create back links to your products in an unethical fashion. I can’t tell you how many of them say something like this, “Many people have a hard time trying to find information about what to write. Just go to _ _ _ _articles.com and look up your subject. Just reword each sentence so you aren’t plagiarizing, and there you have it! Voilà an instant article!”

This is clearly against the Global Professional Standards that should be maintained by anyone in this industry. No wonder there’s so much junk out there that you have to wade through when doing a proper search for something you’re interested in!

It’s one thing to do research on a product you are selling but it’s another one just take an article that someone has written and rephrase it, line by line to fit your needs. I know that there are people that have made a lot of money in Internet marketing and there are those who want to make a lot of money in this industry, but this isn’t right.

And here’s something you may want to consider, a standard by which you may judge whether something is right or wrong: anybody who claims that you can make instant cash, and then teaches you an unethical method to get it, should be avoided.

If you have purchased a program from any of these big-name gurus who openly flaunts an unethical method of reaching the goal, I would send it back and demand a refund. Remember the 10 Commandments, at least the one that says “thou shalt not steal?” That’s what plagiarism is-stealing.

Every commandment given has a blessing and a curse associated with it. After 3500 years you would think that we would see the wisdom of following all of the 10 Commandments. But alas, we only think about today and a quick buck would sure make a nice change in our life. “To heck with the Commandments, I need to pay the power company.”

And so our society slips a little bit lower and we wonder why we feel like were being cursed.

Twitter Mistakes to Avoid!

Kelly Smith — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 19:57:38 +0000

Twitter has take over the world by storm. A hurricane in fact. But there are some things that many people do when they get on Twitter that turn others off and reduces their effectiveness on it.

If the goal of Twitter is to get the most followers, how do you do that and not become a “Twitter-Quitter” after a month of tweeting?

Here is one quick lesson: Avoid Automatic Tweeting Software!

Why? It is extremely annoying and ruins your value to the marketplace real quick. Automatic software programs are use to constantly pump out a series of quotes or tweets. This gets real old real fast. Even if you have 1000 tweets that were constantly recycled it wouldn’t take long for someone to recognize that you are doing this automatically.

It reminds me of the movie “Real Genius” that came out in 1985 (I think it was that movie, the one with Val Kilmer). This was about a college of extremely intelligent people. There was a scene in the movie where there’s a large college classroom.

The first time they showed this scene the professor stood down at the bottom near the chalkboard at his desk looking up at a few hundred students. He proceeded to teach his lesson while the students took notes.

The next time you see this scene you notice that one of the students has placed a tape recorder on the desk to record the professors teachings. The next time you see this same scene there are several students that have placed tape recorders on their desk.

Eventually it gets to the point where the professor is speaking only to a group of tape recorders. And the final scene is that the professor broadcasts his tape recorded teachings through a set of large speakers so that all of the other tape recorders will record his recording!

No interaction.
No question-and-answer period.
No true teaching taking place
Just give me the information and let me do what I want to do when I want to do it.

Twitter has become somewhat like that: A whole bunch of people with automatic messages set on autopilot thinking that everybody else is actually there. I have done tests and found out that if I have 1000 followers and send out a message, only 9 actual people were reading what I wrote at that time! Of course it depends greatly upon the time of day if those messages were sent out but you get my point.

You are not going to develop any real relationships through automatic messaging!

Set aside some time to actually be there and tweet your followers, developing relationships, reveal who you are and what you have to offer. Twitter can become extremely addictive so it is important that you set a time limit on this but I’m here to tell you is that if you spend the time and get to know the people that are following you it will work wonders.

To get some education on how to generate Leads for ANY business, go here: http://www.SeminarMindap.com

Internet Marketing and Lead Generation

Kelly Smith — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 02:32:18 +0000

There is not a single company running today that cannot use more leads, more customers or more sales. The recent drop in the economy of our country and the world, has left many a company in a fairly tight situation. Of course they need more leads but they’re not sure the best way to find them. In many large corporations advertising and marketing are the first things to go which has always been perplexing to me.

Why cut off the source of future growth?

Any company who adopts this mentality is doomed until it realizes what it’s done. I know there are accountants and bean counters and boards to answer to, and at first it may look like a good decision: an instant drop of expenses of anywhere from 2 to 15%. But the question is, how are they going to replace it?

As an illustration let’s say a company spends 10% of its revenue on advertising (remember this is only an example). A $2,000,000 a year company would then spend approximately $200,000 generating new business. So by eliminating this expense how are they going to generate that $2,000,000 per year?

For a time it will seem to work. They have existing customers and top of the mind awareness at the moment. But that moment is short lied. Top of the mind awareness is obviously key to any advertising program. The next company that advertises in their market will achieve that top of the mind awareness and the customer will be gone.

In a very short time the company that eliminated its advertising budget will be far worse off and really scrambling as to what to do now. If there was anything that should be increased during an economic downturn is the advertising and marketing budgets.

Well, enough of this analysis, let’s figure out our next step of action. You need to find leads. You need new customers. You need more sales.

My name is Kelly Smith and I created this website to introduce myself to you and share with you how I can help your company achieve its marketing goals. My story can be accessed on another page but I will just tell you shortly that I have been involved in some sort of marketing all my life.

I now focused almost exclusively on Internet marketing for companies like yours. The Internet provides the most interesting and powerful resource available to anyone seeking to do any kind of marketing: instantaneous accurate feedback.

If someone buys a yellow page ad they will know when someone calls from that ad because it usually mentioned in the conversation. But what they don’t know is how many people saw the ad. The same is true with a billboard, a radio ad, a newspaper ad or a direct mail program, etc.

Yes there are all kinds of statistics generated to try to show if you are within the “norm” of expectations regarding the program. But you don’t know exactly what is happening. That is not true with Internet advertising or marketing.

I know I’m probably preaching to the choir here but I will remind you that with powerful tracking programs you can know exactly how many people saw your advertisement, what country they live in, what state or even zip code they live in, which website they saw it on, what keywords they used to find you and even what was the resolution of their monitor be viewed on (which I’ve never really figured out why they even bother with that one!).

The fact of the matter is that you can know to the penny how much profit you have made from that advertisement and it is at least 99% accurate. There is no other method of marketing they can reach anywhere close to that statistic.

That is why I have devoted the last couple years investing in the education of what Internet marketing can do. Along the way has been an amazing journey, a fluid one with many changes and surprises.

I have found that some of the simplest things can reap millions of dollars. I have also found that many of the things promising great results produced little.

Here’s a simple hard-nosed fact: no one in the world knows exactly how to market your site. Anybody who tells you that they do is lying. Now of course there are some that have devoted quite a bit of time and effort to us particular market and they may know something important about it but I’m here to tell you that they still do not know 100% the best way to market your website, business, products or service.

I suppose there are a number of reasons for that but I would liken it unto going fishing in the ocean. You have a fast almost infinite horizon of possibilities and you’re trying to narrow it down to a single school of fish. It’s impossible to finish the entire ocean it once. Everyone who has tried has gone broke.

The first thing is to determine exactly what type of fish you wish to attract. Are we going after Sardines? Dolphins? Swordfish? Octopus? Clams? Halibut? Tuna? Whales? And what exact type of any of those “fish” are the most desirable or profitable?

I have seen many a company, parenthetically speaking, rent a boat and head out into the Internet ocean loaded with bait, come back empty-handed. But unlike the traditional fishing industry where experienced fishermen can tell you exactly where to go and what type of bait to use, in our Internet ocean analogy, there is hardly anyone who knows the answer.

Why am I telling you this? Why am I who have created a website telling you I can help you in your business by marketing on the Internet but there aren’t any experienced guides to go to?

I may not know exactly where to go to find the fish you are looking for but I know how to find out where to go. Of course we all have some idea where to go and we will explore all of those possibilities but experience has shown that a surprise awaits you. And it’s always a fun experience.

And here’s the really interesting thing: the Internet isn’t just one thing. Yellow Pages are. So are billboards and direct mail pieces. But the Internet is still vastly untapped. There are many many ways to market on the Internet and MILLIONS of places to go! Once we find that “school of fish” that is your target market, we will help you pull in netloads of customers over and over again!

So what is the next step here? What is the next plan of action? Send me your basic information and I will contact you about how I think I can serve you best. Please be assured I’m not here to send you spam or junk mail any kind. I’m not sell your information to anyone, this is for my company’s eyes only.

My team is here and ready to help you increase your profits and improve your business in more ways than one. You will see what I mean as soon as you start working with us. And it also doesn’t matter whether you’re trying to reach people in a single zip code or multiple countries at once, we know how to do what is needed to find those leads and customers you are looking for.

What would your business be like if you could increase the number of new customers you have by 2%? How about 5%? How about 25%? Or even 150%? Anything is possible with the correct marketing campaign. We are here to help you create that campaign and although we certainly have to put in a disclaimer that we can’t promise results like that, we do promise we will do everything we can to help you reach your goals.

Thank you. I look forward to visiting with you and I mostly look forward to seeing a smile on your face knowing that this was an excellent decision in hiring our company.