Please help avenge my fathers murder

Part I – Traditional Offline Marketing

Don’t think of these methods as too simple or mundane. They are very effective when done right and combined with other techniques in this report.

1) Classified Ads – This is something everyone should be testing in some form or another. It’s great for lead generations. You should still have a strong benefit-driven headline and a clear call to action. Free reports work very well with classifieds. My local paper, the Hartford Courant even has an ongoing deal of 3 lines for 3 days – for free! Even adding more lines only ends up costing a few bucks. With a price like that, there’s no reason anyone with a website should not be testing ways to draw traffic to the site with classifieds.

2) Direct Mail – Nothing beats direct response when it comes to results-driven proven advertising. And messages sent directly to your highly targeted market via direct mail can deliver a terrific return on investment (ROI) when tested properly. There’s a wealth of information on direct marketing by Michel Fortin, David Garfinkel, Gary Halbert, Dan Kennedy, and many more experts. Here are some sites where you can learn more:

http://www.successdoctor.com - Michel Fortin’s main site

http://www.world-copywriting-institute.com - David Garfinkel’s site

http://www.thegaryhalbertletter.com - Home of the Gary Halbert Letter

http://www.dankennedy.com - Dan Kennedy’s site

http://www.srds.com - The Standard Rate & Data (SRDS) List Book, a great resource to locate mailing lists of nearly any type you can imagine. You can also find it in some larger city libraries.

http://www.referenceusa.com - Reference USA is a great place to get compiled lists by industry, SIC, demographics and more. It contains names, addresses and lots of other great information on more than 12 million U.S. businesses, 102 million U.S. residents, 683,000 U.S. health care providers, 1 million Canadian businesses, and 11 million Canadian residents.

http://www.usps.com - The US Postal Service website has a variety of tools and educational materials about direct mail as well.

3) Postcards – Yes, postcards are a form of direct mail, but it warrants its own category. Postcards are cheaper to produce and mail than full-blown direct mail packages or sales letters, and they are great for generating leads. Like classified ads, a free report or free gift often works well here. Postcards are also a great way to stay in touch with your customers and prospects, and they also work well as part of a sequence of mailings. A good place to go for customized postcards is http://www.usps.com (the US Postal Service website), because the USPS has partnered with a company that will print and mail your postcards for you! Best of all, you only pay for the postage (i.e. FREE printing costs). Hint: be sure to include yourself on the mailing list so you can get your own mailing as well.

4) Yellow Pages – Another great resource that is often underutilized or used ineffectively. Yellow page ads are great because when someone sees your ad, they are already in the market for your product or service. Yellow page ads need to be benefits-driven, with your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) stated clearly and boldly (remember, this is the one place where your prospects will see your ad alongside all of your competitors). You want your ad to stand out from the clutter. Use a direct response type of ad, and again, free gifts or premiums work well here.

Gary Halbert has written about yellow pages several times in his newsletter. To find them easily, just enter the following search at Google:

site:thegaryhalbertletter.com +”yellow page”

Another great resource that JP Maroney recommends is Alan Saltz’s course on the subject, available at http://www.yellowpagesprofit.com

A great thread on this topic can also be found on Michel Fortin’s forum at: http://www.copywritersboard.com/viewtopic.php?t=1652

5) Space Ads – If you’re going to do a space ad, it will generally get better results if you use the same layout as the editorials. Use the same font styles and sizes for the headline, body, etc. If the newspaper uses 2 columns per article on the page your ad will appear, use 2 columns in your ad. If they use 3 columns, you use 3. The “advertorial” approach almost always does better than traditional space ads that scream “ad.”

A great way to get very low costs space ads is to use what’s known as remnant, or standby advertising. Enter the following search in Google to see what I mean and to learn more:

site:thegaryhalbertletter.com +"Nancy Jones"

And you’ll learn to experiment in many creative ways to find out what works for you. A local advertising paper, the Rare Reminder here in the Hartford area, has classified ads and space ads. But I noticed that one “stone and mulch” company has their space ad featured upside-down in every weekly issue. At first I thought it was a mistake. But after seeing it upside-down week after week, I suspected they found that their upside-down ad stands out from the clutter. People think it’s a mistake and read it. Yes, it’s a gimmick. Would I do it? Only if it tested positively. And maybe it has for these folks. Food for thought.

6) Radio/TV/Infomercials – You might be surprised how inexpensive you can get these types of slots, especially if you use remnant advertising. Study the best infomercials, for example (the ones you see over and over again…they must be working or they wouldn’t keep airing them), to get some ideas on how they are constructed.

7) Flyers – Who says you can’t hire a high school student to stuff mailboxes or stick ‘em under windshields? Obviously if you are selling a high-priced financial course, it would be better to target the windshields of a fancy hotel than your local Wal-Mart. And I believe the US Postal Service also prints them for you like they do postcards if you want to mail them. Check out http://www.usps.com

8) Networking – Your local Chamber of Commerce, trade shows, seminars, and anywhere your prospects hang out are all good opportunities for networking. In many cases, the hotel bar the night before the seminar is the best opportunity for making contacts. It’s usually more effective to try to capture contacts and leads than to try to close a sale on the spot, so get your elevator speech ready and have plenty of business cards on hand.

9) Telemarketing – Remember the “Do Not Call” list only applies to consumers, so if you do any kind of business to business selling, telemarketing is a viable marketing method you can use effectively. Also, the “Do Not Call” list may not apply to you with your customers or if you already have a relationship with your prospects.

10) A Trade Show Booth – A great place to capture leads. Again, a free report or gift does wonders. When you get a long line waiting at your booth, many people will stop by just to see what the fuss is about. Make your sales materials and sales people benefit-driven. Remember what your prospects are thinking: “What’s in it for me?”

11) Blimps, Banners, and Billboards – If it’s zoned for advertising and it’s blank, you have an opportunity.

12) Door Hangers – Those same high school students can help you with door hangers as well.

13) Circulars – Again, high school students can also help you hand out circulars, post them on community bulletin boards, on telephone poles, wherever. You can make a donation to your local church and ask them if you can leave a stack at their next bake sale or bingo event. And certainly you can arrange to have your circular included in your local newspaper or community paper. For your money, circulars are very inexpensive to print and distribute.

14) Card Decks – These stacks of index cards are mailed to targeted audiences. Each deck can contain anywhere from 50 to 200 cards or so, each with an advertisement or coupon. They may also double as a business reply card on back. Since your ad is mixed in with tons of others, it’s especially important to have a great headline and layout that will stand out from the clutter.

Card decks are inexpensive because all of the advertisers are sharing the cost of the mailing. They can cost as little as three cents a prospect for large mailings. Even for smaller mailings, they are generally cheap, which is good for testing.

Make sure you choose your audience wisely. Card decks are great for targeting a niche. Free reports or books work especially well here, because the person flipping through the cards will be attracted to the word “FREE.” As always, make sure there is a clear call to action. Multiple methods of response usually work better than a single method. For example, they can drop the card in the mail, call a free recorded message, go to your website, etc. And you may have some options with remnant space, so always try to negotiate a lower price (how hard is it for them to stick another card in their mailing…their costs are incremental and their profit is high even on remnant rates).

A couple other tips: When you see repeat advertisers in a deck, you have a pretty good idea that the deck is working for that ad. If that ad also targets your niche market, it may be a good one to test in. Also, test with copy that you already know works.

15) Value-Paks – Similar to card decks, “value-paks” are little booklets with multiple ads. They are mostly used with coupons, rather than business reply cards.

16) Ad Magazines – You’ve seen them. Magazines that are little more than a collection of space ads. They are usually local, and the ads in them usually aren’t direct response. By putting your direct response ad there, you stand out over all the other ads. But the downside is that these magazines tend to be less niche-focused (although there are certainly exceptions, with the real estate and automobile-themed magazines and newspapers).

17) Catalogues – Your catalog doesn’t have to look like L.L. Bean or the like to be effective. A good one to study with respect to the ads themselves is the J. Peterman catalogue (check out http://www.jpeterman.com).

Here’s a good way to start small and work up from there in developing a good catalogue:

a) Try a simple double-sided flyer first and test response.

b) Make sure you locate highly targeted lists, as the wasted cost of mailings is going to be your biggest expense.

c) Continue to expand, test, and tweak. Test everything—your layout, your copy, your prices—until you find the best combination.

Exposure to the Industry

In the MLM industry, there are a few factors to consider when considering which company to build a long term business.

Product background

Marketing or Compensation plan

The team (Upline, Sidelines, even the company staff)

The trend of the time

First off: It has been said in the past – your UPLINE chooses the first company you join. It still is the case today for many who are either unexposed and their friends or relatives who join an MLM first approaches them.

The unexposed might oblige their upline and if they are not careful, will cause a very bad first impression on the industry.

Today, you don’t need to be picked by someone else. You can choose first. Do a good survey based on the guidelines above. As a matter of fact, you don’t even need to join the first person who invited you in a company. You have a choice to choose someone else to be your upline within the SAME company.

Products are very crucial in MLM. Just because one company says our product is the ‘best’ doesn’t mean that it is. Just like any other business, people seriously building an MLM will only say good things about their own product. They will even give fantastic and even outrageous testimonials about how the product can help them.

Many are very sincere and well-meaning, but the rule of thumb to remember is – yes, you say the product is the best, but that is also because you haven’t tried any others because you are in this business!

I firmly believe that most MLM products are of exceptional quality. That is because the product must work then only can the distributor give good testimonials due to the nature of the distributor doing direct sales (dealing directly with the prospect/customer). There are companies that DISCOURAGE their people from using products from a competitor MLM (some even ask you to stop buying from the supermarket and buy from your ‘own business’ instead).

Beware: some even go as far as to talk down about the products of other MLM companies. Most people, in their zealous zeal to recruit others, may use this tactic. This is often perceived as rather unprofessional.

Bear in mind: in MLM, if you talk bad about other MLM companies or their products, you are talking bad about the entire industry as a WHOLE (you mean to say that only your company, product, compensation plan, team is the best in the world and the rest of all the other companies are of inferior quality? Man… I don’t want to be in this industry.) Can you imagine if every network marketer is doing this? No wonder the industry has a bad name!

Types of People Who Are Looking For Opportunities

Remember that people join MLM companies for their own reasons. However, the character or intention of a person will determine how far they want to go in MLM. Here are classic examples of different types of people

(1) Genuine business opportunity seekers and builders

(2) Product consumers

(3) The supporters

(4) MLM junkies

(5) 001 syndrome

Genuine business opportunity seekers are the most important people in building a large business. They are the bread and butter. Not all are leaders but leaders are not born, they are developed. This group of people also can be product consumers.

Product consumers are people who join an MLM and buy from them because they like the product and enjoy the service of their upline. They are not necessarily genuine business opportunity seekers or builders yet for many builders, a lot of their income will come from this group. The good thing about them is as they learn more about the product, the company and interact more with their upline, their exposure to MLM grows and they might convert to opportunity seekers and then builders.

The supporters’ category is quite a mixed match of people. When their close friends or relatives build an MLM, they will join under them to ‘support their businesses. However, the consequence of that action varies according to the individual. For example, I would join my friend’s organization but it could be purely out of obligation and not for any genuine reason. This could potentially lead to resentment (when you mix business dealings with friendship), confusion and even loss of friends. Others might even join to see if their friend or relative is involved in a scam to try and pull him or her out. In order to prevent any potential disaster, make sure your intentions for joining an MLM are very clear cut.

MLM junkies are the sort of people who jump from MLM to MLM (some people even call them Multi-Level-Monkeys). They attend a talk, get hyped up about the opportunity, and build the business on euphoria. Sooner or later, they lose steam and find problems with the company (when the real problem is themselves most of the time) and jump to the next SMOKING HOT business opportunity. It is not wrong to be a member of many MLM companies (depending on your budget). Bear in mind, certain companies discourage or even forbid you to join other companies (then their business practices should be examined). If you are a member of many companies, it is ok to do a good survey and attend trainings, but the key to remember is you must focus on ONE good MLM for the long run and the others can operate on a referral basis (like recommending a friend to buy a product from another company while building one main one).

This leads us to one more category of people who could be MLM junkies as well – the 001 syndrome. Basically they want to be the first to start building a business in a brand new start-up. They want to be the pioneer. There are many pros and cons to assess about a new company like their background history, financial status and product market rather than just focusing on the income potential. There are many more challenges to be faced for people who are sponsored directly under the company and new companies don’t usually have a time-tested workable system in place.

If you fall into one of the above categories (or even some or all of the above), these will give you a general guideline on how to improve your choice selection of MLM companies before we go in to the details about compensation plans and product demand. By knowing yourself better, you can do a better assessment.

Saving Money on Products

Retailing of a product is very important to an MLM business. Lack of (or even non-existing) retailing could be harmful to the distributor or the company as certain states have outlawed ‘headhunting’ and have their own policies.

Nevertheless, saving money on an MLM product is one of the most wonderful key features of joining an MLM company if recruiting is not your forte.

In certain compensation plans, repeat purchase of the products you buy from the company gives you more rebates or bonuses. In essence, the more you buy, the cheaper it becomes. This becomes an even greater pleasure if you are totally in love with the products or you have already set aside a budget for those products (which means you are now buying from the MLM company or your upline instead of buying from the supermarket, pharmacy, grocery store, etc)

There are some important aspects to take note however, if the company requires you to purchase the products in bulk (hence the term – frontloading), is there a DEMOTION in your achieved position in the company, is there MAINTAINANCE required, or how much are the renewal fees for membership. All these will be further discussed in the later chapters.

What Network Marketing is NOT

• It is NOT an INVESTMENT PROGRAM! Just because you bought a business opportunity, it will forever be a business ‘opportunity’ and not a business if you sit and do nothing. This is not Unit Trust or Mutual funds or a Fixed Deposit Savings Account. The money doesn’t grow by you becoming a distributor. The more you invest doesn’t mean you will necessarily earn more.

• It is NOT a GET RICH QUICK SCHEME! Those who make it big in MLM within a short time are the EXCEPTION to the NORM. Do you have what they have? (The experience, built trusts, contacts, paid the price) Everyone who has made it had all paid the price.

• It is NOT totally a SALES RECRUITMENT PROGRAM. Some like to sell. Some are salespersons, being good in sales will not make you succeed in MLM.

• It is not MUSICAL CHAIRS. It is never about whom gets there first, sponsor a few people then sit down and watch the group build itself while the latecomers miss out on the opportunity forever. Remember that if the downline works harder, they will eventually earn more than their uplines.

• It is not a 9-5 JOB. In a 9-5 job, some people get away without doing any work sometimes (they still get their salary). But it is very obvious in Network Marketing that what you GIVE is what you GET.

• It is not a CLONING MACHINE. I am not down playing the need for uniformity and like-mind direction but remember that EVERYONE is DIFFERENT. Different people have a different personal touch when it comes to recruiting. Their relationships with their prospects vary from groups to groups.

• It is NOT a 100 METER DASH. It is a marathon. Business builders must pace themselves over a period of time. Going ‘all out’ to the point of exhaustion is just bad because it is the quality of the work that counts, not the quantity. Don’t ‘close the back door’ or jump into the deep end without a float.

• It is DEFINITELY not a RELIGION. Please never ever treat your business like it is the ONLY business worth getting into (friend, if you don’t get into MY MLM and if you join others, you are not my friend). They are NOT losers if they don’t join you! Please don’t ever, EVER do this. You will lose a lot of true friends.

If You’re New to Blogs…

It surprised me that I’m getting the 1st page positions in MSN’s results for some of these posts… which of course brings traffic!

Anyway… the post actually turned into an about Blogging post. Someone (minicoopers) asked:

I frequently read people who state “my blog this” or “my blog that” but I have absolutley no idea what blog is.

So here are the basics:

MSN Must Love Blogs…

Some excerpts from that thread (there’s more comments from others if you go to the actual thread):

A Blog is essentially an online journal. BUT the content is on a website…

You post about whatever you want. Kind of like posting here…

There are literally millions of Blogs on the internet. They take many different shapes and forms… The software I use is WordPress.org. I host it on my own website…

BUT their are also free ones out there like Blogger.com (owned by Google)…

I Blog possesses many benefits.

First they are easy to set up… You could literally be blogging in minutes from now.

Second it acts as a CMS (content management system). You don’t have to upload anything or use FTP. You simply post like we do here… The information is automatically organized for you.

Some are highly customizable like WordPress… where you actually could use it simply as a CMS if you wanted and modify it to do many, many things…

The possiblities are limitless…

The other perk is that you can ping…. You hook it up with a service like PingOMatic.com and it will let dozens of services know you’ve updated your site and increases traffic to your blog. Essentially it helps draw the SEs to you…

That’s why mine gets indexed so fast. I ping and the search engine crawls another site and follows my link back to me!

Also you can allow RSS feeds….

So that’s basically it… there is a lot more to it, but that’s the jist.

They are the rage because of the quick indexing and also the can be monetized with Adsense or affiliate marketing or ? The skies the limit.

More about Pinging:

Each time your blog pings, your post is picked up by these services that will list a link to your site… A search engine will then come along and follow that to your Blog and index you.

This doesn’t guarantee traffic… you do have to Blog about something that someone might query about. Still need the right keywords.

If You use Blogger.com, it actually pings WebLogs.

Goto: Settings/Publishing/Choose Yes to Notify Weblogs.com/Save Settings…

That’s it! Now it will ping each time you post.

Blogging is powerful. Is it here to stay? Maybe, maybe not… although, it really does provide what the internet is all about. Content… fresh content.