Here is a simple 3-Step Process that will get you on the road to success.

Step 1 – Get the right tools:

l  A Website…or Blogsite – you need to have your own site so you can control the content.

l  An Autoresponder – you need to be able to follow up with your leads to build a relationship and generate sales with continued contact through your autoresponder letters giving value for free and promoting your valuable offers.

l  A  Giveaway product or resource – you need a way to entice your prospects into giving you their name and email address by giving something of value to them in exchange.

l  A Product to Sell – Pick a low-priced product such as an e-book, or software related to the Giveaway product but with more value. This is designed to build trust in your offers and paves the way for you to make more valuable offers to them yielding higher profits for you in the future.

Step 2 – Build a system:

l  Lead Capture Pages – you need to create a page with an opt-in form that will allow your prospects to enter their name and email address in order to receive your information and gifts.

l  The Opt-In Process – set up the opt-in process with Thank You pages and Confirmation pages that add value, build your relationship and make additional offers.

l  The Follow Up – you can build a series of pre-written emails that will go out at certain intervals that will introduce yourself, warm up your leads, and make offers that should generate additional revenue.

Step 3 – Generate Traffic: Once you have all the other pieces of the system in place, you can start generating traffic and sending prospects to your lead capture page.

l  Traffic Exchanges – Don’t pay for this, there are good ones for free.  These include manual traffic exchanges, list builders or safelists and articles.

l  Posting Content from Blogs can be a great way to get Search Engine or Organic traffic.

l  PPC (Pay Per Click) – this includes Pay Per Click and Co-Registration.  Make sure you know how much it costs to acquire a lead and how much a subscriber is worth to you to avoid paying too much.  Be careful with this one, depending on what keywords you choose can cause you to make money or lose money. (More on this in my newsletter)

If you follow these 3 steps you’ll be building a good foundation that will allow you to achieve the goals you have for your Internet business.

Success to You, Mark Bergstrom

Case Study
Choosing a Marketing Plan: Traditional or Social Media?

By JANE L. LEVERE
Published: February 24, 2010

EPC CIGAR COMPANY manufactures and distributes cigars that are hand-rolled in the Dominican Republic from Ecuadorean, Nicaraguan and Dominican tobacco. It has been in business since April, although the family that owns it previously ran a successful cigar company that was sold to Swedish Match in 1999.
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Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times

Ernesto Perez-Carrillo III, one of three family members who run EPC Cigars, decided to use the Internet and social media for marketing the business.

Did EPC Cigar Pick the Right Marketing Campaign?

To see how business owners with related experience assess EPC Cigar’s plans and to leave your own comments, please go to nytimes.com/boss.

Related
Case Study: Looking to Expand, but Fearing It, Too (January 21, 2010)

THE CHALLENGE To develop a cost-effective and efficient marketing strategy to promote the company and its new brand, E. P. Carrillo, while building on the family’s legacy.

THE BACKGROUND EPC Cigar, based in Miami, is owned and operated by the Perez-Carrillo family, whose Cuban-born patriarch, Ernesto Perez-Carrillo, established El Credito Cigars in 1968; its best-known brand was La Gloria Cubana. After Mr. Perez-Carrillo’s death, his son, Ernesto Perez-Carrillo Jr., sold El Credito to Swedish Match in 1999, working there until March 2009. Mr. Perez-Carrillo Jr., 58, remains a big deal in the cigar world.

He was encouraged to start EPC Cigar by his daughter, Lissette, 36, a lawyer based in Miami, and his son, Ernesto Perez-Carrillo III, 28, a management consultant based in New York, both of whom had worked for El Credito while growing up. The three family members run the company, which employs 34 people in Miami and the Dominican Republic.

Its first product was a $13 limited-edition inaugural cigar released in December; it will be followed this spring by the core E. P. Carrillo line, which will be available in five sizes priced from $6 to $8.

Last year, Mr. Perez-Carrillo III, who oversees the company’s marketing, hired an advertising agency, DeVito/Verdi, to develop a logo, labels, packaging and a marketing campaign to introduce the new company and its cigars. Mr. Perez-Carrillo III estimates that EPC Cigar will spend $300,000 on the campaign, which began in April 2009 and will run through December.

THE OPTIONS DeVito/Verdi suggested a range of traditional and new-media marketing strategies.

The traditional options included taxi-top advertising in New York City; commercials on cable channels like Comedy Central, Spike and VH1; radio ads in cities like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago; and print ads in publications like The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune, Yachting, Golf Digest, Wine Spectator and Cigar Aficionado. With the exception of Cigar Aficionado, these promotions would aim at casual cigar smokers and even nonsmokers willing to try the company’s cigars.

The social media options included three Web site concepts: one involved a collage on the company Web site of live, online mentions of the company and Ernesto Perez-Carrillo Jr.; a second featured a world map (from Google Maps) on the Web site that showed the origin of real-time Twitter messages about cigars; and a third would use a Facebook page as the company’s main online presence. In any case, the digital strategy would involve the use of Twitter, Facebook and Flickr.

THE DECISION Ultimately, Mr. Perez-Carrillo III decided to take DeVito/Verdi’s advice and emphasize the Internet and social media initiatives. Ellis Verdi, president of the agency, calls social media “a natural place to go when you want to show something real,” adding, “If you say it’s real, people won’t believe you, but the Internet lets you show it.”

Mr. Perez-Carrillo III said his primary objection to traditional media outlets was the expense. “For the first go-around,” he said, “we put them off the table.” The company, according to Mr. Perez-Carrillo III, will spend $40,000 on digital-media initiatives between 2009 and 2010, with the remaining $260,000 of its marketing budget going to trade shows, cigar-enthusiast events, point-of-sale material and some traditional media.

Social media allow the company to communicate directly with cigar buyers, retailers, tobacco growers and others with whom it does business, according to both EPC Cigar and its agency. This is particularly important as the popularity of once-fashionable cigar bars wanes and public smoking bans proliferate.

At the agency’s recommendation, the Perez-Carrillos chose the Web concept based on Google Maps and Twitter. Thus, on the home page, Twitter messages about cigars — regardless of whether they are about EPC Cigar or raise health concerns about cigar smoking — appear on a world map that rotates to show where the messages originated.

The site’s “About Us” section uses another world map to show places where EPC Cigar conducts business or has roots, thus honoring the family’s history. The section also offers photographs and videos, including a vintage, black-and-white snapshot of Mr. Perez-Carrillo Jr. as a child in Cuba and modern videos of a Nicaraguan tobacco farm.

The site lists retailers that sell the company’s cigars, with Google Maps indicating their locations, and more than 1,000 places to smoke, with recommendations contributed by visitors and by Cigar Places, a Web site for cigar enthusiasts. DeVito/Verdi is in the process of developing an iPhone application that will feature these cigar-friendly places.

The agency has encouraged Mr. Perez-Carrillo Jr. — and not his son — to use Twitter to build and communicate with the company’s following. It is Mr. Perez-Carrillo Jr., said Tyler DeAngelo, interactive creative director of DeVito/Verdi, who is “the face of the brand.”

While Mr. Perez-Carrillo Jr. posts Twitter messages almost daily, Mr. Perez-Carrillo III maintains the company’s Facebook page, where he posts articles and reviews and encourages fans to comment. There are also links on the page to the company’s Twitter feed, YouTube videos and Flickr photos. Similarly, there is a box that pops up from the home page of its Web site that lets visitors “follow Ernesto” on all four social media channels.

THE RESULTS So far, only about 250 people are following EPC Cigar through Twitter and about 700 are Facebook fans. These numbers notwithstanding, the Perez-Carrillo family and DeVito/Verdi say they are satisfied with the campaign’s impact.

“To have a lot of people talk about the limited-edition cigar after only a few months, in a market that’s challenged, in an industry that’s not really growing, is very exciting,” Mr. Verdi said.

The campaign has “generated a lot of buzz so far,” Mr. Perez-Carrillo III said. “When we talk to retailers, to the end consumer, everyone pretty much knows Ernesto’s gone on his own. They can’t wait for him to come out with the core line.”

One unexpected benefit is that Mr. Perez-Carrillo III has been using Google Analytics to track how many people visit the Web site and where they come from. He has discovered that almost one-third of the visitors do not live in the United States. “I’m talking to foreign distributors far more quickly than I expected I would,” he said.

The 25,000 limited-edition cigars that EPC Cigar has been releasing monthly since December “are selling extremely quickly,” Mr. Perez-Carrillo III said. He projects sales of $1.5 million this year.

How do you think this applies to your business? – Mark Bergstrom

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When you sell a product sometimes you can get caught up in the features and physical characteristics of that product (like low price, beautiful appearance, great smell, great taste etc…) and forget what really sells the product. Rest assured your customer knows exactly why they buy the product and it has nothing to do with the description or physical characteristics of the product. It’s the benefits that sell your product.
When you buy a product what are you thinking? I’m thinking: “Ok what’s this going to do for me?” I bought some cleansing tea – Did I get it because of its appearance, smell, taste, or price?… or maybe because of the attractive well-designed colorful brochure?
Nope, I have good tasting economical tea at home I got from the grocery store. I got the tea because of the benefits associated with it. I saw the benefits I needed and knew I wanted; I saw cleansing for the colon, relief for indigestion, bloating, acid reflux, and an effective tool for weight loss. Finally what strengthened my resolve to buy were testimonials of other people who were already experiencing these benefits that I wanted.
Everything else about the tea that didn’t involve what the tea could do for me were minor technicalities for me. It’s all about the benefits. – Dave Puckett

Always try to see through your customers eyes. Mark Bergstrom

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Do you have “Spamophobia”? You can’t tell by checking your temperature or your blood pressure, only by checking your attitude can you know for sure. During the past 12 years I’ve been on the internet it has always amazed and bewildered me the attitude our culture has on a little thing called “spam”. The range of emotions this little thing evokes in us are varied; going from red-faced, blood pressure rising anger to opt-ing out disappointment and everywhere
in-between.

So what is spam and why is it hated so much? Webster’s dictionary says: it’s unsolicited commercial email sent to a large number of addresses. Encyclopedia Britannica says: it’s unsolicited commercial electronic messages, email being the most common means of transmitting spam, but blogs, social networking sites, newsgroups, and cell phones are also being used. However our culture seems to have an even broader definition of spam: ” it is any kind of advertising we don’t like… appearing anywhere on the internet! “, so as you can see anything you don’t like can be spam… it’s all up to the beholder. Britannica even goes on to say spam is viewed with widespread disdain – imagine that? Ok it’s hated but why? I can honestly say I don’t know why; whey we tolerate other things in our daily lives that wastes more of our time, cost us more money, causes us more physical effort to avoid and we view these things as minor nuisances. I’m talking about TV commercials, postal junk mail, movie trailers before the feature, audio commercials on the phone while you wait to speak with the person you called.
Aren’t these all unsolicited and unwanted? Of course they are! Then these nuisances would be spam too wouldn’t they? Why then don’t we hate these as much as the spam we see on the internet? Again I don’t know, do you?
Have you ever been watching a movie or TV show and it stops for a “pop-up”? (commercial that is, not browser window) After you see the commercial for Clarol shampoo do you jump up from your chair ranting and raving – “I’ve just been spammed!?” “Who’s the sender? … Ah it’s Johnson and Johnson I’m going to report them to the FTC!” How about when the mail carrier hands you postal junk mail – do you yell at him/her saying: “You just delivered spam to me! who’s your boss? – I’m going to report you… Let me see, who is the sender? I’m going to report them also!” No, you’re not angry, you just quietly proceed to the kitchen where you fill up your trashcan with the junk mail costing you time and money.
Tell me – when you receive spam on the internet, whether in the form of email or pop-ups…what horrible painstaking time and money costs do you go through to get rid of it? Isn’t it the effortlessly speedy click of your mouse that makes it all go away in a nano-second?

Hopefully I’ve given you some fresh perspective about spam, or at least pause to think about it. We don’t need to demonize it and view it with so much hatred. Let’s just look at it for what it is – Advertising; whether solicited or unsolicited it’s just advertising the same as the traditional forms you have always tolerated all your life with no second thought. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating spamming; it is against the law and we must all obey the law no matter what we think of it. I only ask that you be fair in how you look at it.
Now back to my original question: Do you have Spamophobia? If you think all advertising you don’t like is spam and just thinking about it upsets you then yes you have this disease. The good news is we can all control how we think and feel about anything. Don’t be a “Spamophobe”
- Dave Puckett

Yours in Success ~ Mark

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Have you seen any good movies lately?  If you have would you recommend the movie to a friend?  If they were good friends they probably would go see the movie just on your recommendation wouldn’t they?  Sure they would; because they trust your judgment.

Now imagine if someone as world-renowned and powerfully influential as the Pope were to recommend something it would be even more credible than a friend wouldn’t it?… Of course it would, that’s why people all over the world follow his advice.  Well that’s exactly what just happened!…In a recent USA Today article titled: “ Pope to Priests: Go forth and Blog” the Pope urges priests to use all multi-media tools at their disposal including blogs and websites to preach the gospel.

If you’ve ever had any doubts as to the power and effectiveness of blogging as one of the “key” tools you should use to succeed in your business this highest of recommendations should lay them to rest.    – Dave Puckett

What do you think?  ~ Mark

Yes this business has given me some freedom.  I said some freedom because I haven’t  become rich yet and I still work a primary job, but I don’t live paycheck to paycheck anymore!
This network marketing  business does provide me enough extra money per month to make a big difference in my life – all this from only part time effort!  One thing I have noticed though… my success is not isolated.  I know many who are making enough to make their car payment, or the mortgage payment each month.  I think for those who are looking to get rich fast this probably won’t  be interesting for them, however if you are one of those who want to reduce the stress of living paycheck to paycheck give network marketing a try.  – Dave Puckett

If you are in a business, what benefit do you notice for yourself?  ~ Mark

If you think your best chances of success is getting a college degree and you can write your own ticket… you better think again!  According to a recent New York Times article more than 4,600 lawyers lost their jobs last year. Gone are the times when all that was needed to succeed in life is get a college degree.

NY Times further related the concerns of a fifth-year associate in a law firm in Manhattan who complained he now feels he is expendable even though he is a top performer, billing many hours and a team player but even with this he may still lose his job. He is a Yale graduate at a top-20 firm.  One 2008 graduate of a top-10 law school who worked at a large Chicago firm for a year admitted she spent days trying to look busy as business dried up while not billing a single hour; before being laid off last fall along with a quarter of the other first-year hires.

“Plenty of recent law school graduates are not finding work at all” “Some partners say that the next generation of law graduates may have to expect less from a legal career.” said Eileen C. Travis, the director of the New York City bar association’s lawyer assistance program.

Our American way of life has changed, first by the rapidly diminishing middle class due to the fall of factory workers across the nation and now as you can see even the high-class elite’s troubles in earning a good living. For those workers all across the nation who still have jobs, employers are making those jobs harder and paying less money for them.  What’s the solution? well you probably have heard where one door closes another one opens and it’s still true today.  Supplement your income with a home-based business. There’s nothing you can do about how the American workforce is changing but this is still America and we all still have the freedom to start a business of our own.  In the past only “traditional” businesses were viable and very few people could start one because of the huge start-up capital required.  However low-cost home-based businesses have been available for many years but our culture’s mass perception of this business was to laugh it off as a viable option believing because it could be started with so small an investment that it couldn’t possibly produce a substantial income.  So the people who worked these home-based businesses quietly earned significant second incomes, many made fortunes.

Today home-based businesses are not being laughed at anymore, there is a huge, and ever-increasing number of people starting, working, and earning substantial second incomes to supplement their primary jobs.  Many people make enough to quit their primary “traditional” jobs and just work their business. And even better news is that the number of home-based businesses continue to grow and require even less money to start than before providing an even better opportunity for the masses to supplement their incomes. How about you…are you still laughing?

- Dave Puckett

A sobering reality indeed ~ Mark

If you’re a newbie to online business social networking may be a new technique to you, even if you’re a veteran you’ve no doubt heard all the buzz about it due to it’s widespread popularity.  Well it’s only popular because it works! … what?  Yes I said it works but will any social networking program work for you?  Sorry but the “honest” answer to that question is  NO.   Why?  Because the systems out there were developed to make system owners wealthy not you… and you have to pay “them” a monthly fee just to use “their” system to make “them” more money to promote “their” products.

Do you see a pattern on who really benefits here?

Sure they will pay you a commission for getting these sales for them but how does that help
your business?  It doesn’t.
Unfortunately people don’t find this out until they pay the monthly fees and sometimes fees to promote the products too.  These products are called “affiliate” products and they can produce some immediate cash flow, but the truth is you can promote affiliate products for free and use a social networking program that is also free.  There are many affiliate programs that you can join for free that produce significant commissions.
The bottom line is that you should use a Social Networking program that promotes “Your”
business and passively promote a few affiliate products for extra cash at the same time.  – Dave Puckett

Good luck in your business pursuits  ~ Mark