LAST CHANCE: Beat the 2010 Price Increase

For those of you who don’t know, here’s how the Hyper-Responsive Marketing Club developed.

I started out as a psychologist and a Fortune 500 advertising consultant, doing work for large companies like AT&T, Lipton, Novartis, Whirlpool, Exxon, Nextel, Citibank, Colgate-Palmolive, Panasonic, Nabisco.

But I freaked out at all the travel and corporate nonsense (one time I had to go to Japan for a one hour meeting and turn right around and come home, seriously).

So, with Perry Marshall’s help (amongst others), I wound up in niche marketing, applying the same advertising research techniques to keyword research and analysis (and then product and sales funnel development) as I had used with the large companies.

It was kind of like an atom bomb… I entered 17 markets successfully (more or less consecutively). People noticed and started asking me to speak at seminars, develop my own course, and teach teach teach.

Well, the problem was, early on I didn’t realize the average person found my systems hard to implement. Not hard as in difficult… hard as in most people didn’t want to take the kind of time I was taking to research the market before they started marketing. (Hard for me to understand this, but that’s how people are I guess).

Anyway, after about 1,000 copies of the $1,000 system were sold, I had coached enough people who implemented it successfully IN PIECES AND PARTS to see that it WAS possible to get about 50% of the benefit with 20% of the work. Moreover, I just got SICK SICK SICK of people telling me it was brilliant but they’d never do it. (I haven’t actually vomited in 20 years… but if one more person told me that I swear I was going to break my streak… especially since I was getting letters and calls from the few people who DID do it and were paying off their mortgages, building full time incomes, thanking me profusely, etc)

So I TOOK THE THING OFF THE MARKET, and re-worked it into a much simpler system. At the same time, the internet had evolved dramatically, especially where Google’s rules for Quality Score were concerned, and it was no longer possible to just jump in and buy PPC traffic for a survey without having a substantial site which anticipated to a certain extent what would please the audience.

AND… I had started Rocket Clicks, the done-for-you PPC service which grew faster than any of us could have imagined, and gave me the opportunity to look deeply into literally hundreds of business models… not just in theory, but actually evaluating dollars in vs. dollars out so I could see what worked. (In the middle of the economic disaster in 2008 to boot)

The outcome was clear to me… I had to help people use my techniques on FEWER keywords, which they’d conquer with focus and determination, so they could establish a CENTER OF GRAVITY IN ADWORDS…

Turns out, the stronger you are on a bulls eye keyword, the more Google’s fuzzy logic algorithms can succeed in bringing your more traffic.

FEWER KEYWORDS = MORE MONEY!

COURTESY NOTICE: Last chance to beat the 2010 price increase on the Hyper-Responsive Marketing club: (lock in your rates today)

Thankfully, fewer keywords also meant:

-Less competitors to study

- Less time spent managing advertising

- A clearer focus in SEO

- A pristine filter for separating the noise from the gold in the social media chatter

- An easier to write salesletter and autoresponder sequence

- Less money and other resources wasted on inefficient advertising

- A simpler and more hyper-focused web design task

-A generally more focused and successful business (and owner)

But if you’re going to focus on one center of gravity, you’d better have a logical, systematic way to choose it, otherwise you’ll never have the CONFIDENCE to put so many eggs in that one basket.

So I developed and tested a mathematical formula which accounts for volume, relevance, bid price, and combines them into one metric, as well as a process for identifying candidates and choosing the ABSOLUTE BEST ONE for your business.

It turns out that this FOCUS was the GOLDEN KEY which made it possible for people to start IMPLEMENTING my systems successfully. Because it cut down the work dramatically and amplified the results.

Moreover, as the social media world has entered the fray, it’s now possible to gather enough intelligence about your market without spending a dime, that you can put up a reasonably good site before you do your survey.    (In fact, for competitive markets I recommend to many people that they launch their project and build their survey into their opt in process)

Anyway, I can’t over-emphasize the power of what I’ve found. FEWER KEYWORDS = MORE MONEY.    And month by month I’ll show you how to implement this:

- Month 1: Choosing Your Bulls Eye Keyword

- Month 2: Building an Automated Hyper-Intelligence Machine

- Month 3: The Modified Survey Method

- Month 4: Turning Intelligence Into Words That Sell

- Month 5: Hyper-Design Principles for Your Bulls Eye Target

- Month 6: Building a Hyper-Responsive Follow Up System

- Month 7: Hyper-Converting High Quality Landing Pages for Adwords

- Month 8: Business Launch Cash Flow Planning

- Month 9: Over My Shoulder Adwords Launch Method

- Month 10: Public Relations for Bulls Eye Targets …. and so on.

But perhaps the best thing I’ve discovered is that people seem to learn best when they WATCH ME IMPLEMENT the techniques on a real business… NOT when they just hear me talk about it in a lecture like a stodgy old college professor.

So after a few months I got up my nerve and decided to crack the weight loss market and let you watch. (The first 2 months are on Migraines). Guess what… it’s working!

COURTESY NOTICE: Last chance to beat the 2010 price increase on the Hyper-Responsive Marketing club: (lock in your rates today)

Anyway… I suppose the last thing I’d like to say about the club is, because I’ve been around the internet marketing game a long time, and because this initially was more of a labor of love than a true business venture (I just couldn’t stand people not implementing my work), … I decided to deliver approximately 6 to 12 hours of content every month, rather than the traditional 1 or 2 hours most gurus provide for a LOT more than I charge!

I figured, the real business changing events in my life were full day seminars, where I really got immersed in a focused topic, and walked away with a single, practical insight.    Not dozens of rah-rah things I COULD do, but ONE thing I WOULD do to change my business when I returned.

So that’s kind of how I think of the club each month. And I WAS rewarded for my efforts…

- Over the first 9 months, I lost only 5% of members each month. That’s unheard of in this market, where the average retention is 70% (some people might want to join, just to see how that’s done)

- People DID start implementing and succeeding – I was able to raise the price every few months and because of the reputation (I plan to keep raising it until I hit major resistance, while letting people lock in their original order rate)

COURTESY NOTICE: Last chance to beat the 2010 price increase on the Hyper-Responsive Marketing club: (lock in your rates today)

So please permit me to summarize why you should join TODAY:

1) WATCH A REAL BUSINESS BEING DEVELOPED: This club is one of the very, very few places you can actually watch a real business being developed from scratch. In other words, I don’t only TALK about what to do in some electronic classroom in the sky, I actually SHOW YOU me DOING it as I develop a REAL business.

2) GET 6 To 12 HOURS FOR 1/2 THE PRICE OTHERS CHARGE FOR ONLY ONE: While most other gurus are charging $97/mo for only an hour or two of THEORY, Glenn’s delivering virtually a whole seminar (6 to 12 hours/mo) for much less.

3) LEARN FROM AN AGENCY OWNER: I’m not only a marketing educator, I’m a Rocket Clicks founder and I’ve seen hundreds of business models from the inside out. Which means, I don’t just guess about what’s working and what’s not, I’ve seen the dollars in vs. dollars out reports. I’m not talking theory!

4) I’VE LIVED IN THE REAL WORLD: I’ve consulted for dozens of real companies … Lipton, AT&T, Novartis, Panasonic, Whirlpool, Colgate-Palmolive, Bausch & Lomb, Nextel, etc. I might be known in our circles as “the guinea pig direct response guy”, but my techniques are explosive in these circles because they come from an entirely different industry.

5) I’VE DONE WHAT I’M TEACHING: I’ve launched over 17 markets profitably, the vast majority of which had nothing to do with the IM crowd. I’m not a guru who’s done nothing but be a guru.

6) I’M HONEST: You won’t get rich next month using my work. It’s not even within the realm of possibility. But you WILL learn how to build a secure foundation for your business so it can grow and grow and grow.

7) YOU’LL LEARN A DIFFERENT WAY TO THINK ABOUT MARKETING: Perhaps most importantly, I’ll teach you a different way to think about marketing which will last you a lifetime. *

COURTESY NOTICE:  Last chance to beat the 2010 price increase on the Hyper-Responsive Marketing club: (lock in your rates today)

Our Top PPC Blog Posts of 2009!

Here at ROI Revolution we've enjoyed reviewing our most popular posts of the past year. There have been a lot of changes in the Pay-Per-Click world over the last twelve months, and it's been exciting to watch them unfold.

To wrap up the year we've ranked our top 7 PPC blog posts of 2009:

1. The One vs. Many-Per-Click Breakdown --Turn to this article for a breakdown of the One Vs. Many-Per-Click conversion change that happened in Google AdWords this past year. Since conversions are a reflection of your bottom line, understanding this change is crucial!

2. Top 5 Free PPC Tools --There are tons of FREE PPC tools on the web. Some of them are great, some are alright, and some are just OK. Here are ROI we've had experience with almost all of them, and have compiled a list of the top 5 for you to reference.

3. Introduction to Google's Ad Auction, Part 1: Quality Score --This 2 part blog series summarizes a video put together by Google's Chief Economist. Part 1 outlines Google's Quality Score and what is required to have a good one.

4. Introduction to Google's Ad Auction, Part 2: AdRank and CPC -- Getting to the top of Google can be tricky (and expensive). This blog article outlines exactly how Google calculates AdRank and the cost you pay per click.

5.How to Use Negative Keywords When Targeting Google's Content Network -- Setting up campaigns to target Google's content network can be confusing enough, add in negative keywords and you've got yourself a double whammy. This article explains best practices when using negative keywords when targeting Google's content network.

6. Have You Used Google's New Wonder Wheel? -- We loved Google's new tool so much we blogged about it! Google's Wonder Wheel can help you expand your keyword list, build out content campaigns, find new negative keywords, and much more!

7.Google's New Interface Will Make Your Advertising Life Easier -- Google released their new interface for AdWords in 2009. Our article outlines the top features and benefits, and also links to our New AdWords user interface webinar where you'll see how the new AdWords User Interface will save you hours of your limited time, help you cut wasted adspend, and discover hew highly relevant keywords and placements to scale your online profits!

We hope you have enjoyed recapping our top posts of 2009.

Best wishes in the new year!

I’m thankful.

It's the day before New Years Eve, I've been up since 6am getting all kinds of projects done. It'll be at least a year before most of this morning's work sees the light of day, but it's on the conveyor belt.

Snowflakes are drifting down from the sky outside my window and I just came back from a walk around the neighborhood. (I prefer a brisk walk outdoors to an exercise machine, personally.)

At my fingertips, access to most of the world's information and the greatest minds, both living and dead.

At my fingertips, tens of thousands of awesome customers and virtual friends who give me the honor of their trust, with important business and marketing decisions. They've given me permission to talk to them when I feel I have something worthwhile to say and that's a high privilege.

Downstairs, a very close friend of ours is making lunch.

In Saint Louis, my wife is at a conference where she met a woman just yesterday who is helping former child soldiers in Uganda. Something can now be done to right something that for years has been horribly wrong.

On my headphones, jazz guitarist Stanley Jordan is performing a remake of Joe Jackson's "Stepping Out" and he's doing a superlative job, in my humble opinion.

Outside in the snow, my kids are playing some crazy game with their friends, running around with imaginary weapons and preparing for more serious games they'll be playing decades from now.

The World Wide Web is the most radical technological development since fire, and 20 years ago it didn't exist. The most influential company on the Internet didn't even exist 12 years ago. In the next 10 years, companies will spring up even faster than Google, and make even more money.

5 years from now you may be in a business that has never been thought of in 2009.

What an incredible time to be alive.

Yes, I know about the problems. I know about the global warming and the slave trade and the earthquakes and tsunamis and Osama Bin Laden. I know about cancer and birth defects and the bloody 20th century and the pollution in China and the prostitution rings in Bangkok. I know about all that.

But you don't get rid of bad things by obsessing about them. You create alternatives.

You don't free enslaved people by enslaving free people. You work to make free people even freer.

This morning a guy named Steve posted a comment on my blog: "Your devotion to helping small time Entrepreneur's make it big is without a doubt the most noble profession any human being could take on and you should be praised for you commitment to helping your fellow man."

Wow, what a high compliment. I'm thankful to be assisting a ragtag collection of geeks, freaks and misfits find their way in this crazy, digital world. I'm thankful to be surrounded by a community of passionate entrepreneurs who help each other and watch each others' backs and build things together.

I'm thankful to have been taught principles by the world's wisest people, both past and present. I'm thankful to live in a country that has a constitution and faith in right and liberty and human rights.

I'm thankful that despite whatever paranoia the media throws into the stir-fry today, I have the right to ignore them and charge forward and build a better world for next week and next year and the next century.

I'm thankful for customers who believe as I do, for people who face insurmountable odds (there are occasional days when NOBODY would ever choose to be an entrepreneur, right?).

I'm thankful for victories and resilience and the never-ending stream of innovations and ideas.

We truly live in miraculous times. Don't ever let anyone make you forget that.

Here's to living your own resounding success story in 2010 – the story you will someday tell.

Perry Marshall

More Unusual Adwords Tips to Save Money in 2010

OK, well, the year is rapidly drawing to a close, so let me leave you with several additional quick adwords tips to save you money in 2010 (Thanks VERY much to Jerrold Burke, Jered Klima, Dan Zuzanski, Laureen Hoeft, Rob Sieracki, and all the rest of the Rocket Clicks PPC team for helping me compile this):

• Don’t judge the success of the content network without cleaning it up first.  Aggressively look for site and category exclusions (in the content placement report AND the standard user interface for the campaign).  As a last resort consider managing effective placements discovered on a CPM basis while you gradually throttle  down the automatic placement campaign (you can drag and drop placements between two campaigns using the Adwords Editor)
• In your most profitable adgroups, don’t necessarily split test a new ad with 50% of your traffic unless you’re very early in the game and you’re fairly sure you’ve got a good change to beat the control. Instead, use the Adwords Editor to make several copies of the existing ad, and change only ONE of them.  This way, you’re only exposing the TEST to a small percentage of your otherwise profitable traffic… if it’s a bomb, you lose a lot less.  If it starts to look like a winner, you can delete many of the other copies to increase the exposure frequency of the test ad (but be careful not to delete the CONTROL copy with all the history until the winner has been firmly declared)
• Don’t be content using just text ads. Local Business Ads, Ad Extensions, and Ad Site Links are very effective yet underutilized media for many businesses.  (And in the content network, don’t forget to test display advertising)
• Test something wildly and insanely different from your existing control ad. I mean, something which kind of irks you to try.   Onesentance.org is a good source of inspiration for ad copy in this light (thanks to David Bullock for pointing this out).   Another good source is to write a controversial ad which goes 100% against all the benefits your competitors are touting.  For example, in the adwords market itself you used to see ads saying “You will make money tonight”… so what you’d do instead is say “Some of these animals are lying!  Be the tortoise, not the hare”… see where I’m going?
• Take advantage of Google’s Betas, especially if you’re a more traditional e-commerce marketing with an actual catalog of products sold through a shopping cart.
• Don’t use the same copy or landing pages  in the content network as you do in search. Content surfers are READERS, searchers are SCANNERS.  (We’ll do more on this in a future audio)
• Go through the reporting center once a week to see if there are new metrics available which could be of use. (These days, new data points seem to be accelerating on an almost monthly basis)

And for heaven’s sake, if you’re not a member of my Hyper Responsive Club already, get out there and join before the price increases forever on Friday (or when I hit 1,000 members, which is looking like it might happen before then since Perry Marshall decided to tell his list of 250,000+ people to jump on board today).

Because without the information in this club, I can virtually guarantee you haven’t carefully defined a very specific keyword target to conquer online with focus and determination.  And if you haven’t done that, I know you’re suffering with much lower click through, conversion, and quality scores than you’d otherwise have. Join now

I know everyone hesitates to join a new monthly club, and no one wants to commit to a new monthly expense. (Note: you can cancel any time, and even the first month is refundable if you decide you don’t like it for any reason, or no reason at all)

But the thing is, hardly anyone is sorry once they’ve joined mine.  Join now

That’s because:

1) YOU’LL SEE A REAL BUSINESS BEING DEVELOPED: This club is one of the very, very few places you can actually watch a real business being developed from scratch. In other words, I don’t only TALK about what to do in some electronic classroom in the sky, I actually SHOW YOU me DOING it as I develop a REAL business.  Join now

2) YOU GET 6 To 12 HOURS FOR MUCH LESS THAN WHAT OTHERS CHARGE FOR ONLY 1 HOUR: While most other gurus are charging $97/mo for only an hour or two of  THEORY, Glenn’s delivering virtually a whole seminar (6 to 12 hours/mo) for much less.  Join now

3) YOU’LL LEARN FROM AN AGENCY OWNER: I’m not only a marketing educator, I’m a Rocket Clicks founder and I’ve seen hundreds of business models from the inside out. Which means, I don’t just guess about what’s working and what’s not, I’ve seen the dollars in vs. dollars out reports. I’m not talking theory, and I’m not going to pee on your back while I tell you it’s raining.  You’ll get the straight truth, even when it’s not sexy.  Which is what you NEED in order to succeed, rather than just to feel good for a few months while you consume another piece of intellectual entertainment.  Join now

4) I’VE LIVED IN THE REAL WORLD: I’ve consulted for dozens of real companies … Lipton, AT&T, Novartis, Panasonic, Whirlpool, Colgate-Palmolive, Bausch & Lomb, Nextel, etc. I might be known in our circles as “the guinea pig direct response guy”, but my techniques are explosive in these circles because they come from an entirely different industry.  Join now

5) I’VE DONE WHAT I’M TEACHING: I’ve launched over 17 markets profitably, the vast majority of which had nothing to do with the IM crowd. I’m not a guru who’s done nothing but be a guru.

6) I’M HONEST: You won’t get rich next month using my work. It’s not even within the realm of possibility. But you WILL learn how to build a secure foundation for your business so it can grow and grow and grow.  Join now

7) YOU’LL LEARN A DIFFERENT WAY TO THINK ABOUT MARKETING: Perhaps most importantly, I’ll teach you a different way to think about marketing which will last you a lifetime.

BEAT THE PRICE RAISE (On January 1st): Join now

And have a Happy New Year!

Dr. G

Our 8 Most Popular Analytics Posts of 2009

The end of the year is a nice time to take a look back over all that was accomplished throughout the year. To that end, I'm going to give you a list of our top 8 Analytics Blog Posts of 2009. As we go through the list, I'll give you a short description of each post as well as any random thoughts I have about the post.

Enjoy the posts and have a Happy New Year!

#1. 6 Tools Every GA User Should Have

Shawn Purtell

Random Thoughts:

This was by far the most popular post of 2009. It did so well that I decided to steal its format in hope of boosting the popularity of this post. It now includes 7 tools instead of 6 for added tool enjoyment. Looking over this list, even though this post was written back in January of '09, most of these tools are still very useful enhancements of the Google Analytics Interface and have even been updated since the writing of the post. GANotes, on the other hand, has achieved what every Google Analytics Tool dreams of becoming one day: it is now a Google Analytics fully-fledged feature known as Annotations.

#2. Tracking Transactions back to Initial Referrer

Jeremy Aube

Random Thoughts:

What's up with that frog? Apparently the idea is that considering the size of that frog, this is probably the first time it's been touched by human hands, i.e. first touch. There's a lot of talk about first-touch attribution vs. last-touch attribution. This post explains a way to get both in Google Analytics.

#3. Five Google Analytics FAILS

Michael Harrison

Random Thoughts:

We've seen people do a lot of crazy Google Analytics setups. Unfortunately, many of these fails are all too common. This post is worth reading just for the laughs alone (well, OK, it's GA humor, but it's still pretty funny), but it also serves as a much needed warning sign. Most of these fails resulted in permanent damage of one sort or another to Google Analytics data.

#4 ga.js code for GWO

Jeremy Aube

Random Thoughts:

Yet another update to GARE. This particular update was nice because allowed you to get the appropriate modifications for subdomain and multiple domain tracking. I'm not sure if this particular GARE feature still works (Update 12/30/2009: just fixed this. It should work fine now.); Google updated the Google Website Optimizer Interface so that ga.js code is provided by default.

#5. 5 Advanced Segments for Ecommerce

Michael Harrison

Random Thoughts:

Another list post, this one dealing with using the fairly-new, enterprise-level feature, advanced segments, to uncover more than ever before about your ecommerce data. My particular favorite advanced segment is #2. It used to be very difficult to determine the influence of a landing page on your site, but advanced segments makes this easy (and maybe even fun!).

#6. 6 Tools to Troubleshoot GA

Shawn Purtell

Random:

For some reason, I'm reminded of a quote: "So far alls I've come up with is the effects of gasoline. {pauses a bit} On fire." There are a lot of things on fire in this post too. We use most of these tools every day. Personally, my life would be pretty much over if I didn't have FireBug.

#7. Stressing About Ecommerce Variables?

Caitlin Cook

Random Thoughts:

Yes, those ecommerce functions sure do ask a lot of you. Fortunately you don't have to give into their demands. This post tells you exactly which variables you need to make Google Analytics ecommerce tracking work for you.

#8. Viewing A/B Experiments in Google Analytics

Shawn Purtell

Random Thoughts:

Getting Google Website Optimizer data for multi-variate tests into Google Analytics takes a little bit of work. For A/B tests, this data is available by default in Google Analytics since each combination in your test is a separate page. This post tells you how to further unlock your A/B test data in Google Analytics using advanced segments. It also has a really nice screenshot of GARE in action.

Quality Scores & nailing the marketing bulls-eye

If you've been on my list for any length of time you certainly know of Glenn Livingston's conversion boosting survey methods. You may also know I was so impressed by his track record of consecutive profitable market entries that I asked to fly to his house to be HIS student a few years back.

What you may NOT know is how much this method has evolved in the last 18 months since he opened Rocket Clicks (now with 25+ staff) and reviewed hundreds of Adwords accounts.

What was once a rather sophisticated yet hard to implement twist on market surveys, risk management, and segmentation, has turned into a brilliantly simple but incredibly effective step by step system for developing an "ADWORDS CENTER OF GRAVITY," and dominating your market with focus and determination.

In fact, this method is so effective that when Bryan Todd  implemented it in OUR accounts (and remember, WE are the  Adwords gurus), the campaigns and adgroups we applied it to quickly beat the rest of our Quality Scores.

A larger and larger percentage of my most successful coaching students are also using Glenn's methods, and I'm starting to think they're indispensable if you want to succeed in Adwords in 2010 and beyond. Bryan and I made a strategic decision to integrate Glenn more fully into the 2010 version of the Definitive Guide, for instance, and of course, he'll be speaking in Maui.

Anyway, Glenn's informed me he'll be raising the price on January 1st (or when he hits 1,000 active members, a number he's been hovering below but not quite reached), so I'd STRONGLY recommend you head on over and at least get acquainted with his methods, you'll thank me for it, I'm sure:

One last thing about Glenn's Hyper-Responsive Club:

As soon as you join, you begin to receive a series of monthly case studies. These are much deeper looks at real online businesses than are available almost anywhere else.

For example in month 8 you get a hyper-specific account of Glenn's entry into the weight loss market, which is one of the hardest markets to crack, period.

Glenn was successful on the FIRST TRY. (Just a few weeks ago Glenn was in a panic about the fact that it *might not* work out so great and he'd get egg on his face. I talked him out of a tree. :^)

My friend, this kind of systematic predictable success is unheard of. I don't believe in "Yellow Brick Roads" but I have to say this is about as close to a formulaic plan as I've ever seen.

Ignore this at your peril.

http://www.PerrySentMe.com

Using Emotional Nudity in Marketing

Here’s an interesting observation:   I get complaints on my blog when I diverge from strictly teaching marketing ideas in a kind of professorial manner, yet it’s these very same posts which generate the most interaction and sales (hands down)… why do you think that is?

Here are this year’s favorites (they all open in a new window):

• Human Nature and Your Marketing Mindset
• The Strange Psychology of Money:
• Another Reason Businesses Fail, the Myth of Work vs. Play:
• 6 Unusual Reasons Businesses Fail:
• Confuse and Conquer: Something Else I Hate:
• Antimonials: Do You Hate Me?
• Emotional Marketing Wife Loses Mind:
• Warning: My Products May Cause Cancer:
• Emotional Adwords Marketing:
• Maximum Adwords Results in Minimum Time:

Of all the above, only TWO contained extremely strong, immediately usable marketing information you could take and profit from within days.   Yet, the other 130 some-odd posts I made which DID concentrate on providing such information garnered half the sales and 1/3 the comments. (Go through the archives day by day, particular those posts categorized under Adwords, you’ll find incredibly valuable information if you’ll actually put it to use)

Why is that?

Shouldn’t it be the other way around?  I mean, don’t you all read my blog for money-making information?  For valuable marketing insights?

I’ll tell you why.

It’s because your market only pays you if  you make them feel happy while you’re delivering your core benefits.

It’s kind of like going to the doctor.   Medicine isn’t sexy.  Shots hurt.

Which is why people don’t choose doctors who are all business.

Sure, they want to know the doctor’s reputation and previous success rate with their particular problems… but all other things being equal, PEOPLE CHOOSE DOCTORS WITH THE BEST BEDSIDE MANNER.

You want a competent doctor who treats you like a PERSON, not a bug under a microscope, right?

While you can’t feasibly interact with thousands of individuals, the next best thing is personal sharing, stories, and “emotional nudity”.   Which means TAKING RISKS, getting criticized, feeling humiliated and embarrassed at times, yet forging forward no matter what.

Speaking of which…

My 7 year old nephew Ben asked me why I don’t ever share my piano compositions with my list. (He wants to be a concert pianist and composer and I think he’s gonna get there).   I reflexively went to tell him “because they’re not really relevant”…

But you know what… that’s the cowards response, and it’s not how I want to influence him.

Because the more risks I take with my list to let you get to know me, the more risks I know you’ll take with YOUR lists to let them get to know you… which should mean more money, interaction, sales, and happy people all around.

So, somewhat against my better judgment, but in full keeping with the philosophy I’m espousing above, here’s a little something I wrote and played on Christmas at Ben’s house this year (the lady holding the camera is my sister Laurie), with nervous mistakes and all,  dressed in sloppy jeans and very messy hair from flopping around with the kids for hours on the floor:

Which begs the question… are you getting naked with your market?

Hope your Holiday week is going fabulously, and you’re planning for a successful decade ahead.

All my best,

Dr G

PS:   I really DO put all my best thinking, step by step, into the hyper-responsive marketing club, and the price really is going up forever on January 1st.  (”Forever” as in, this is the lowest you’ll ever see it again, ever). I wouldn’t push it so hard if I didn’t think it was in your best interest… won’t you take me up on my offer to have you join and lock in the lower rate today?

Mastermind Call Tuesday December 29 – Time Management!

It's the end of 2009 and there's no better time than RIGHT NOW to sharpen the use of your precious time.

On tomorrow's Mastermind Call I'm going to talk about how I manage mine, and how the most successful entrepreneurs I know manage theirs.

I have an entire structure for how I envision the year 2010 and the challenge of squeezing even more results from every hour. On this call we'll talk about:

• How to get the maximum amount of $1,000+ per hour work done in 2010!
• Time blocking and beginning-of-year priorities
• Systems that literally force me to operate at maximum productivity during certain days of the month
• Engineering creative space and "fun stuff"
• A totally counter-intuitive way of looking at work days and holidays
• An easy way to identify high-value activities that lurk beneath the "ordinary-ness" of your day
• Managing email, cell phone, text messages and interruptions
• Delegating and ways of finding great talent
• The simplest possible way to free up 30-120 minutes per day – starting as soon as next week

Date: Tuesday December 29, 2009
Time: 10:00am Central Time (11am Eastern, 8am Pacific, 16:00 GMT)

This will be recorded and the MP3 will be distributed soon after the call.

We'll have hot seat time during the second hour of the call. We can talk about anything you want but priority will be given to time and business management questions.

This call is ONLY available to Mastermind Club members and above (Alumni Club, Roundtable). You can sign up for Mastermind Club here.

Perry Marshall

Time Flies…. and yes, there’s enough

TICK – TICK – TICK

On New Years Eve 1999 as a crowd counted down the final seconds of the 20th century, my bro-in-law Ted was struggling to wrap his mind around how fast time flies. He shook his head in disbelief. "Wow, here we are at the threshold of a brand new millennium."

Where were you that night? Remember the hysteria? The media was in a frenzy over Y2K. The sky was falling, all the computers in the world were going to stop, the electrical grid was gonna shut down and we were all storing up fruit cans and bottled water.

Snap your fingers, a decade has flown by. Four days left before 2010.

How do you feel about how you've invested these last 10 years?

Most people feel life is too short, there's not enough time to do what you want to do. Most folks come to the end of their life feeling like they never did most of the things they hoped. There just wasn't enough time.

I say there IS enough time. I say time is *plentiful* for those who act purposefully.

Why do I say that?

Because of the 80/20 rule. 80/20 says: 50% of what gets accomplished happens in 1% of your time.

Which means if you replace ONE hour per day of mindlessly checking email, channel surfing and Facebooking…. or if you just DELEGATE one hour per day of $10 per hour tasks and tackle $1000 per hour projects instead – you'll double your productivity.

First you must put a HIGH value on your time.

You need to say NO to more people.

You need to unsubscribe from more time-wasting emails.

You must move more and more $10/hour tasks off your plate to make room for the big stuff.

You plan your work every day, and work your plan. Get that stuff checked off your list.

Do you have a "bucket list"? A list of things you wanna do before you kick the bucket? I bet you can get 25% of that list crossed off in 2010 if you get serious about it.

Oddly, another secret to super productivity is taking time OFF.

I generally make it a habit to do no work on Sundays. I feel no guilt whatsoever about taking a 2 hour nap or doing some completely mindless or stupid activity. One day a week I say NO to all work.

Saying "NO" is one of the most powerful things you do in business, or in life.

Taking one day off every week and just enjoying yourself, taking a spiritual break and being with your family is one of the secrets to squeezing ALL the juice out of this orange called life.

There's plenty of time. As long as you prize it highly.

TICK – TICK – TICK.

Perry Marshall

Yet Another Easy Way to Save Money in Adwords

OK, so everyone knows how valuable constant and never ending improvement is.  And when it comes to Adwords, MOST advertisers aggressively split test their highest traffic groups.

The result is (hopefully) an upwards evolving click through rate associated with a continued creeping in of new and/or better benefits, or better language the primary benefits offered by the Adwords ads, at least until you reach a point of diminishing returns and it becomes difficult to raise your CTR any higher (usually because you’ve hit on an ad which convinces most of the qualified people you COULD get to click to do so).

With me so far?  It’s all good.

Now, here’s what hardly anyone does, … and by hardly anyone I mean, like, almost no one.

• In the 20% of adgroups responsible for 80% of your traffic, you should NEVER let your split tests grow your Click Through Rate without making a corresponding change to your landing pages. (This implies, of course, that each of these top 20% adgroups will need their own landing page!)

Let’s think about this in plain English first.  Suppose you’ve got an ad like:

Natural Migraine Relief
A Fast and Effective Migraine
Treatment You Can Take Tonight!
www.NaturalMigraineRelief.com

And this ad links to a landing page with a headline that says “Finally, a Fast and Effective, Natural Migraine Treatment You Can Take for Relief Tonight”. Furthermore, because the headline on the landing page is CONGRUOUS with ALL the benefits promised in the ads, conversion is likelydecent.

If the above were an opt in play, I’d venture to guess we’d see about 3% click through (keyword = “migraine relief”) and a 20% conversion.

So far so good right?  (I haven’t said anything you don’t already know).

But here’s what happens in most people’s accounts when they start split testing…

They improve the CTR of the ad BY CHANGING THE BENEFITS AND LANGUAGE, but they then make NO corresponding changes in the landing page.   So they run a split test in Adwords and find something like this (same keyword):

Natural Migraine Relief
A Fast and Effective Migraine
Treatment You Can Take Tonight!
www.NaturalMigraineRelief.com

CTR = 3% (original ad)

Herbal Migraine Relief
Safely Kill Your Migraine with
All Natural Herbs Tonight!
www.NaturalMigraineRelief.com

CTR = 4.7% (test ad)

Now this would be a VERY positive test except for one thing… they neglect to change the landing page.  And so the user clicks on the winning ad with the expectation of finding out how to “Kill” their migraine with “All Natural Herbs”, but finds something only about 70% congruous with this (same as before “”Finally, a Fast and Effective, Natural Migraine Treatment You Can Take for Relief Tonight”)

They think “wait a minute, where’s all that stuff about ‘killing’ and ‘herbs’?

And as a result, conversion goes DOWN.  Oh sure, they still get SOME conversion because the landing page still talks about an effective, natural treatment for migraines, and ultimately that’s what the user was looking for… but we’ve eliminated all of the intelligence we’ve gotten from the split test result by refusing to use the LANGUAGE AND BENEFITS we’ve learned take priority for this audience.

Something like this most often happens:

BEFORE =  3% CTR x 20% CONVERSION

AFTER  = 4.7% CTR x 15% CONVERSION

You wind up erasing at least part of the gains you make in CTR with a corresponding decrease in CONVERSION by letting the split test erode CONGRUITY.  (And sometimes it does more than partially erode the gain, it down right decimates it, or puts you in a worse position than you were to begin with)

This is the answer to the seemingly impossible “AdWords Catch 22″  where it seems like every gain in CTR is offset by a corresponding loss in conversion.

Moreover, when you DO obsessively address congruity between ad and landing page (at least in the 20% of adgroups responsible for 80% of your traffic) you’ll find it’s much easier to make the SALE, not just get the opt in.

That’s because keeping congruous landing pages is the exception, not the rule in Adwords.  Don’t believe me?  Go check out a dozen Adwords landing pages in your market and compare them carefully to the exact promise of the ads that took you there.

Do you see the opportunity?

Short story?

• Link your top adgroups to their own landing pages
• As you make split testing gains, try changing the landing pages to match the evolving promise in the adwords winning ads

Get rewarded with all those blessings conferred on advertisers able to garner high CTR and CONVERSIONS… an evolving dominance of your particular corner of the internet.

Hope it helps,

Dr G

COURTESY NOTICE: Lock in your rates today, the price is going up on January 1st: hyper-responsive club. Watch over my shoulder as I develop a real business.   Learn how to conquer a market with focus and determination, not the tricks and bullshit “lifestyle business” mirage painted by the majority of internet gurus today.    I’ve been around a long time, run a marketing agency, consulted for dozens of Fortune 500 clients, and entered 17 markets profitably.  And I’m still delivering approximately 6 hours of step by step education for less than most marketers charge for 2.   Make 2010 a banner year with the hyper-responsive club (lock in your rates forever before the price raise on January 1st)

PPS:  I rarely speak at seminars anymore, but  I’ll be SPEAKING in Maui, Hawaii at Perry Marshall’s Advanced Adwords Retreat.  Won’t you meet me there?