Don't Re-Invent The Wheel...Improve On It

By Terry Dean

Today, instead of just reading an article, I want you to think of this as more of a heart to heart talk from one marketer to another. I am going to share some of my thoughts and opinions of what I see going on in the Internet marketing community. So, forgive me if it appears that at times I am rambling on throughout today's issue.

I know that what I am going to say is going to upset some of the people reading this, but it needs to be said anyway. Internet Marketers "on average" show a serious lack of understanding of basic marketing knowledge and principles.

They are constantly looking for the new thing...or they are in a quest for the "Holy Grail" of Web Site Traffic. Every week I hear of the new "Traffic Generator" that is out there. I have even participated in many of them only to come away disappointed in the results time after time.

I can tell you how to get more traffic than you will ever need in just a few words, "Give Away something extremely valuable to your market." Just find out what people want...come up with a low or no cost way of providing it...then give it to them. Then, you will have more traffic than you know what to do with!

This next statement may even shock you more than the one above...

"I personally have learned more about how to make money on the Internet from Marketing Books and Videos which didn't even deal with the Internet than from the hundreds of Internet marketing publications and products I have studied!"

Notice that in the past few weeks or months we have been covering a lot of business principles such as Unique Selling Positions, Joint Ventures, Strategy Development, and more. These are weapons that have been taught for decades...but we just have to learn how to apply them to the internet.

Just because we have found a new marketing medium does not mean we need to lay aside time tested business strategies for success. What Jay Abraham, Gary Halbert, Ted Nicholas, and others have taught us throughout the last few decades still works today.

As a matter of fact, the book "Scientific Advertising" was written in the early part of this century by Claude Hopkins. It is a classic on developing advertising that works no matter what medium is being used.

This "Old" Book has been credited as being a factor in the success of some of the top marketing minds of our time. Many of which actually claim to have read the book 34 times or more!

During the past few weeks, I have spoken with several people who use the Internet for one purpose...Testing. Using the Internet, they can test their products and promotion quicker and cheaper than they ever could have done in any other format.

When it comes time to roll out though, they go to direct mail. They have figured out a system that works for them that they know how and enjoy using.

Even if you will never do a direct mail promotion, does that mean that you can't learn from what the most successful direct mailers have been teaching us about direct marketing for decades?

Instead of trying to Re-Invent the Marketing Wheel...let's become people who actually improve on it using the leveraging abilities of the Internet to maximize our time and effectiveness.

Below are 3 examples of business principles that are true irregardless of whether you sell online, by direct mail, in magazines, on TV, or just locally. After the principle, we will cover some ways you can apply these techniques to Internet Marketing and even improve them online.

1) Unique Selling Position

Every business that wants to become successful has to have a Unique Selling Position. There has to be something that sets them apart from every other business in their industry. What makes your web site different from all of the other ones out there? Is it just a copy? If you don't figure out a way to make it better than and different from the average site out there, you are just sinking time and money into a losing proposition.

How does the Internet give us an unfair advantage over marketers of earlier times? It's simple. We can actually go to a search engine. Type in keywords and see what the competition is doing! You can visit 20 different competitors this evening and mark down in a notebook ideas to set your business apart from all of the others out there. This could have never been done so quickly and easily without the power of the Internet.

2) Targeting Your Market and Market Research.

The most powerful feature of the Internet is doing market research. For free, you can visit newsgroups and message boards where your potential customers are hanging out and actually interact with them by asking questions, taking notes, and find out exactly what they are looking for.

The real key to copywriting is finding out what people's hot buttons are. If you had to use the old methods of direct mail to do so, it may have cost you ten thousand to a million dollars to find out how to write a killer ad for your market. Now, you can spend a week or two online and get the exact same result for Free.

3) Joint Ventures

Jay Abraham and Mike Enlow both call Joint Ventures "the fastest, easiest way on earth to make a fortune...and if I had to choose from one single way to make money, this is it." Yet, it isn't even mentioned in many Internet marketing circles.

The reason though that most Internet Marketers could never apply this technique is that they haven't done the two steps above - Develop a USP and research their market. Both of those aspects are the building blocks to setting yourself up as a potential joint venture partner.

During the coming weeks and months we have planned to introduce to the Internet market information products through joint ventures which will revolutionize the ways you think about your online business. Many of these products may even be classics in developing real marketing strategies.

So many Internet marketers need to learn how they can make absolutely any business successful if they use the right marketing techniques...not just try to gamble on the new Internet traffic tool.