What Do We Really Know?

By Robert Middleton - Action PLan Marketing

We all make stupid mistakes.

Often we make them without realizing it. And it's not unusual that we make them for months at a time. We make mistakes that hurt our business, undermine our marketing and sabotage our success.

Now with that gloomy opening, let me tell one on myself.

For the past three months I've been working with the participants of my Marketing Mastery Program to first improve and solidify their overall marketing foundation.

That means web site home page, services page, articles, eZines and marketing action plans. And everyone is making great progress. They are following my directions and creating very good, attention-getting materials.

Then a couple of weeks ago I decided to look at my own web site home page and dig deep into my web statistics. What I found was the equivalent of the BP oil leak. My subscription rate was way down and I had no idea why.

So I decided to get to the bottom of it. I re-analyzed my home page and completely re-wrote it, changed my free offer on my site and modified the sign-up page. All I did really, was follow the directions I give all my clients. (Duh)

The results? Over the past few days I have more that tripled the opt-in rate on my web site. Even over a holiday weekend with low web traffic, I'm getting more subscribers than on high-traffic days from the last several months.

Why is it that a guy who has mastered this stuff (yours truly), can still do such a lousy job? Well, let me introduce you to my three old friends:

Ignorance, Passivity and Randomness.

These actual enemies (disguised as friends) are what can undermine your best intentions to get marketing results.

Ignorance

We don't know and we don't even don't know that we don't know - often when we think we know. Since most people don't know a whole lot more than they really know but forget this fact, it's a wonder that any marketing works at all.

Do you know what content should be on your home page? Do you know what should be in the headline, the first paragraph, the main body content, the call-to-action? If you don't know this stuff, how do you expect to get good results?

Look, even someone who knows enough to know better, forgets he knows it and lets his web site get off track. (moi)

Passivity

A very big enemy, this one. This is the part of yourself that tells you to wait until later, that the problem isn't that serious. Passivity breeds his children, Procrastination, Justification and Arrogance.

Hey, why rock the boat? My web site looks OK, I'm getting enough business from referrals, and besides, I don't want to work too hard. But sooner or later you realize that clients aren't coming so fast and you've been left behind.

Randomness

This is a very subtle enemy because even if you are taking action, but not doing it in a systematic way, you won't get the results you want.

We live our lives more systematically than we think. We follow systems like recipes and they give us better results. But we learned most systems from others who had already mastered them. Our parents, teachers and bosses gave us systems to succeed in life and work.

But self-employed people who are not trained in marketing are usually doing marketing activities completely randomly. A little networking here, a little speaking there, a little social media when you can fit it in. But all done totally randomly, ultimately leading nowhere.

The obvious answers to combatting Ignorance, Passivity and Randomness are: Knowledge, Inspiration, and Systems.

And we all need these. Even me who thinks he has it together.

Why not you?

To learn how you can get the knowledge, inspiration and systems to attract more clients, more consistently, click below for my new report: "5 Silver Bullets to Get Almost Immediate Marketing Results."

http://actionplan.com/silverbullet.html

These Silver Bullets include the exact strategy I used to triple my opt-in rate, as well as the strategy my client used to get two new projects totaling over $170K U.S.

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The More Clients Bottom Line: If you think you know, you're usually in trouble. Better to assume you don't know and start becoming aware of our three friends: Ignorance, Passivity and Randomness. Then we at least will have a fighting chance to move beyond them and actually know something.

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What don't you know that you need to know? Please share your answer on the More Clients Blog by clicking on the Comments link below:

Comments

[Penelope Parker]

I had a well respected marketing chap come and see me almost crying into his Blackberry, that the bottom had dropped out of his market.
I looked at his site. Old News. His course details were out of date; no wonder he didn't have anyone on them. His blog hadn't been touched for months. His tweets had fallen off the perch. This article describes what happened to him exactly. I chivied him along got him energised and in communication again. The next course is filling up and he is out on the circuit again.
I just hope that what goes around, comes around. I could do with a friendly boot-up too.

[vw]

may have sent this twice sorry if I did. After clicking on the Silver Bullet link a screen opens to enter login and password to club. If you are not yet a member what do you do here? Is there another route to the credit card info?