In my Fast Track Marketing System I divide marketing into seven very specific modules:1. The Game of Marketing2. The Mindset of Marketing3. Marketing Messages (Your Value Proposition)4. Marketing and Selling Conversations5. Written Marketing Materials6. Marketing Strategies7. Marketing Action PlansAll of these have their particular challenges. But in my experience in working with thousands of Independent Professionals, it’s #7 that seems to be the hardest for most people.After all, most of the other 6 modules are all about preparation to market yourself.You learn the basics of the game of marketing, you work on your marketing mindset, you develop marketing messages, conversations, and written marketing materials, and ultimately choose the marketing strategies to get the word out.And then the rubber hits the road. You have to actually get out there and connect with potential clients through networking, speaking, an eZine, social media, emails, etc.For most, the bottom falls out of their marketing at this point. It simply goes nowhere, or more specifically it goes into the infamous “Random Zone” where things are done haphazardly and inconsistently.If people have worked to develop the whole foundation of their marketing first, know who their target market is, have put together a web site and have practiced their marketing and selling conversations, they are going to have more success.But even the well-prepared struggle with implementation.Why is putting action plans into action so hard? Here are three of the most common ones. Are they familiar to you?1. As soon as you start reaching out, you face possible rejection. What if your message, your talk, your emails fall on deaf ears? What if your potential clients could care less? What if they outright rejected your promotional efforts?We conjure painful mental images in our mind that stop us cold.For this one we need to work again on our mindset, on our thinking, realizing that if we reach out and people aren’t interested, that it’s not personal. They don’t hate us; either they are simply not good prospects right now or our message doesn’t have the impact it could.So reach out to new prospects and keep improving your messages.2. It takes way more time and effort than you ever thought it would. We think of marketing as a few promotional things we do here and there. This should be easy, we think. But it’s not.Time to do a reality check. Any marketing activity takes time, effort and commitment to make it work. Marketing is a bit of an art and nothing works perfectly on the first draft.You need to make detailed and realistic plans based on strategies that others have used successfully in the past. If you just make it up as you go along, your chances of success are very slim.3. It’s never good enough and although you might even know what you’re doing, you put off your marketing launches until everything is perfect… but it never is.What underlies this are beliefs about perfection, not being good enough and being judged by others. It’s not so much rejection you fear, but disapproval. What will others think of you?Well, if your marketing campaign isn’t relevant to those you are targeting, it’s not a big deal. They’ll just ignore it. They won’t think much about it at all. But for the ones that are looking for what you offer, they’ll not only be interested, they’ll respond.Your prospects are not looking for perfection from you; they’re looking for assistance and value. If you’ve got that, perfection is virtually irrelevant.I’ve done a whole lot of marketing action plans that were rejected by most people, took me a long time to implement, and were far from perfect. And most of them have made me hundreds of thousands of dollars!Marketing success is about know-how, value, commitment, and persistence. Everything else is just a distraction.The Fearless Marketer Bottom Line: There could be a lot of other things stopping you from following through with your marketing plan as well. The question is, where are you going to focus – on your fears and worries about rejection, time, and perfection – or are you going to focus on the value and difference you make and give your marketing plans a real chance?
SEO Video Marketing That Can Lead To Powerful Results
If you’ve been looking for ways to generate more revenue for your business along with bringing more credibility to it, then SEO video marketing definitely needs to be part of your marketing strategy. It is simply a great way to promote your business and gain the trust of your customers and potential customers.
In the past few years Google has given more relevance to YouTube videos within their search results. A simple search on Google will result in a few listings that include YouTube videos within the top results. As this trend continues now is the time for you to take advantage of it by creating videos for your business that relate to the products and services that you offer.
There are a few ways that you can go about doing this and I’ve outlined some of the types of videos that are most commonly used with SEO video marketing.
Option #1: Explainer Videos
This type of video focuses primarily on explaining a product or service. It can also be in the form of a tutorial. These types of videos when done correct can go viral based on the informational content. People search YouTube every day for tutorials, and if your video has great content it will result in more views and will give your business more exposure.
Option #2: Promotional Videos
If you are going to create a promotional video you’ll need to ensure that everything that is mentioned is indeed factual. Many videos are flagged daily that are believed to be misleading and commercially deceptive, so you’ll want to ensure that your video is done in such a way that while being promotional still builds trust and credibility.
Option #3: Slideshow Videos
These are the types of videos that you need to avoid due to the high level of flagging that occurs with these video types. A slideshow video usually is accompanied by music in the background and its entire focus is highlighting text with related pictures. These videos were very popular initially, but have recently led to a high level of flagging due to their low quality content.
Now that you know the three types of videos that are usually used in video marketing, you can now go ahead and start the process of determining your niche. That’s the first step you need to take when undertaking an SEO strategy.
Upon choosing your niche and determining your target keywords, then you’ll want to complete all the standard techniques that you use in traditional search engine optimization. This means that you need to focus on having keywords in your video title, body description, along with having your keyword as your video tags. YouTube also has the option for transcription, so you’ll want to include a transcription with your video that is optimized for your keyword as well.
With your video now optimized, the last step is to create quality backlinks to your video along with having social network signals. This simply means to get links from other sites pointing to your videos, along with having Facebook Likes & Shares, Twitter Retweets, along with Google + votes all directed to your video.
By following these simple SEO video marketing strategies, you’ll be on your way to a top ranking in both YouTube and Google for your chosen keywords.
Finessing the Financing – Navigating the Current Real Estate Buyers Market Part I
Every one is talking about the foreclosure crisis and the slump in the economy. With all the despair surrounding our Nations economy how is one to take advantage of this once in a lifetime buyers market?
Patience, persistence, negotiation, and creativity in financing will be a good point to begin with. For most people going to the bank and asking for a loan is the only way they know how but this series of articles will give you insight on how to finance a home without initially using the bank.
The techniques are legal and are in use by investors. We learned these techniques to be able to finance the deals we have put together for the person with less than stellar credit.
Financing, until recently, was not the barrier. People were being given sub prime loans and are now paying the price of the sub prime lending scam. The loans were legal but they were a disservice to people, this is why I’m calling sub prime loans a scam.
Sub prime loans take advantage of people who are, one not informed, or two who have less than perfect credit. The techniques that will be in this article will not be scams of the sub prime lending. These are techniques you can start using today to help you be in a house in less than thirty days.
These are not sub standard property’s that are involved in the techniques of this article although the same techniques can be used on the less than desirable home.
For many Americans a few blemishes on their credit can keep them from homeownership. Many have sought the services of the credit cleaners, but still a few things may stay due to the nature of the type of account or length of delinquency.
With a conventional loan comes conventional thinking. In our current time and economy there is a call for unconventional thinking on the part of buyers as well as sellers.
One creative technique would be to have a seller carry the financing for either the second mortgage, if the buyer cannot finance the entire amount. Or the seller could carry a first mortgage if the buyer is really having trouble with the bank. Loans like these will probably become more common as the banks begin to tighten the lending requirements.
According to many analysts lending is not as tight as it is going to get in the very near future.
Of course the seller would only hold the note for a short period of time, unlike a conventional loan, which would be for thirty years. The buyer’s mortgage would be for three to five years. At the end of the time period the buyer would find the financing for the remaining portion of the loan. By that time the buyer should qualify for a refinance of the loan.
This is only one of the many ways to finance a home creatively and legally without the buyer or seller losing anything but gaining everything.