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A Parody on Client-Vendor Relationships

By Alex Mandossian

If you’ve got 2 minutes and 19 seconds to spare, take a quick look at this funny video. If you’re a vendor to other companies or if you have vendors, it’s worth watching :-)

Of twelve “observable” attributes I teach my students (and look for in vendors), here are four of the most important:

Resourcefulness
Deadline Sensitivity
Boundary-Based
Networking Skills.

Wouldn’t you agree that it’s just as important for clients to live by the standards they expect their own vendors to demonstrate?

Don’t laugh. This sort of thing happens all the time between clients and vendors.

My chief of web development, Eric Lingenfelter, recently emailed me this video. I sense his team deals with “problem children” clients like those depicted in this video :-(

If you’re an electronic marketer and have vendors who don’t live up to your standards, it makes sense to let them go so they won’t hurt your business or your reputation.

If you’re a vendor and have clients who are inconsistent with the standards they expect you to maintain with them, it’s best to let them go for very the same reasons.

I welcome your personal comments and experiences on this topic.

Do You Measure Your “Critical Drivers” Daily?

By Alex Mandossian

tom-peters “Drivers” are key metrics that can expand (grow) or collapse (kill) your business or any business. Critical drivers are those key metrics, tested and tracked daily, that assist you to anticipate the future.

As I once heard Tony Robbins say, “Anticipation is power.” And I agree. When you look into the past – each day – you can predict the future of your business.

I’ve read many business management books over the years and one of my favorite quotes comes from Tom Peters says, “Test fast, fail fast, adjust fast.“

The age-old management adage, “You can’t manage what you don’t measure,” was probably first uttered (and discovered) by some bazaar merchant thousands of years ago in Babylon.

Yet it’s still positively accurate today!

In my experience, the easiest step to improve any business to begin measuring the critical drivers in the business and then celebrate and amplify what you want to see more of. Case closed.

For retailers like Sam’s Club, a core critical driver may be the “dollars-per-square-foot” generated in each store.

For a real estate management organization like Remax, it may be the “number of new agency offices” opened each month. For an insurance agency, it may mean the “dollars-per-policy” generated, or the “revenue-per-agent.”

The species or types of critical drivers you want to measure is [Read more…]

“Changing the Channel”

By Alex Mandossian

Listen to the Replay…

MaryEllen Tribby is the CEO and Publisher of Early To Rise and one of the world’s leading authorities on “multi-channel” marketing. During this 70-minute Virtual Book Tour, she talks about a few of the 12 easy ways (marketing channels) to add “six-figures” (maybe even seven-figures) to the bottom line of your business.

Click here to get the full story on the bookinar series!

This book is a must-read and belongs in EVERY marketing library, and if you invest in two or more books now, you’ll also get $100 discount on our 5-module bookinar tele-series!

Click here to add this book to your library.

The 3 Common Mistakes Info Marketers Make

By Alex Mandossian

marketing-mistakes These 3 common mistakes come directly from the 20 Biggest Mistakes Info Marketers Make distributed by my good friend, Bret Ridgway at Speaker Fulfillment Services.

“It’s what you learn after you think you know it all that counts most.” That’s what Harry S. Truman once said. Legendary college basketball coach, John Wooden, was also known to say it.

It’s true. No matter how great of a marketer you become, it always pays to take a mental check that you’re avoid to make the most common mistakes.

That’s why I recommend you study these 3 mistakes and then get the full list of 20 mistakes from Bret.

Mistake #1: No “upsells” with your online offers

When you’ve worked hard to attract qualified prospects to your website(s), it pays to make them a second or even third buying offer. That’s called an “upsell.”

Some marketers call them “cross sells” and others call them “revenue bumps.” I call them “cost-reducers” because you automatically slash your customer “acquisition cost” every time a visitor buys more from you during the same buying session.

Mistake #11: No “post-purchase” autoresponder series

It’s mind-boggling how many gifted marketers fail to focus on motivating their initial buyers to consume their purchases faster. Teach them to consume with a 3 to 7 part follow-up (post-purchase) autoresponder series. It costs you nothing to implement and your return-on-investment may shock you!

Every product is a “consumer” product. Look, if your [Read more…]

Vote For The “Tagline” You Prefer Most

By Alex Mandossian

Recently I changed the “look and feel” of this blog. Although I’m happy with the graphics, I think my tagline on the banner can be improved.

It currently promises this:

“Practical Marketing Tips for Information Publishers, Small Business Owners and Entrepreneurial CEOs”

leaning-to-right This morning I crafted four more tagline ideas which I feel better expresses the “promise” of this blog. Take a moment and “comment” on which of these four choices (A, B, C or D) you like most.

A: “Proven Strategies for Entrepreneurs Who Want to Get More Done – Faster, Better and Easier”

B: “Tested Marketing Tips That Boost Your Profits and Productivity – Faster, Better, With Less Human Effort”

C: “Practical Ideas for Entrepreneurs to Get More Done – Faster Better, Easier”

D: “Principle-Centered Strategies that Boost Profits and Accelerate Productivity”

Feel free to add your own ideas if you got a better one. Any suggestion will be most appreciated and I plan on changing the existing tagline by the end of this month.

Please vote in the Comment Section.

Create More Traffic with Articles

By Jeff Herring

ezinearticles.com, article marketing

Article Marketing is the best free way to drive traffic to your web sites and blogs. And when you use the five steps below, you will know what topics to write more about to drive even more traffic.

Step 1: Log into your EzineArticles.com account

In your EzineArticles account you can use the feedback on your articles to let you know what your readers want more of. Once you know this you can write more articles on those topics to drive more traffic.

Step 2: Click on “Author Tools”

It’s in between Profile Manager and Author Resources. Click on “Author Tools”. You’re going to get a drop-down menu.

Step 3: Click on “View My Article Reports”

When you click on “View My Article Reports”, you can see the Article ID, Article Title, Views, URL Clicks, EzinePublisher, Comments, Votes, Rating, and Publication Date. What you want to pay attention to – the things that turn into money – are the Views and the URL Clicks.

Step 4: “Read the street”

“Read the street” means [Read more…]

Here’s Why Beauty Is More Than Skin Deep

By Alex Mandossian

If you’ve got 7 uninterrupted minutes to spare, it’ll be worth your time to invite your family or friends to huddle around this YouTube video. It already has a remarkable 48+ million viewings and over 205,000 five-star ratings!

Grab your mouse and click on the video below so you too can experience why even the unsparingly blunt Simon Cowell gave Boyle two thumbs-up.

Susan Boyle left her audience dazed and stunned with her incredible performance on Britain’s Got Talent. After her 300 seconds on stage she has become a worldwide phenomenon.

The next time you second-guess yourself or have a sliver of self-doubt before any Teleseminar or stage presentation, come back and watch this 7-minute video to summon the confidence to deliver the performance of your life!

Email “FROM” Lines vs. “SUBJECT” Lines

By Alex Mandossian

email-box I’ve surveyed thousands of my students about my findings in this post, so please read it carefully.

Here’s the heart of the matter: Whenever you send an email message to your list, to your friends or colleagues, they privately ask themselves these 2 critical questions before taking further action:

1) WHO is this email from?

2) WHAT is this email about?

Test this premise with yourself. The next time you’re about to open-up and read email messages from your Inbox, what question(s) do you privately ask yourself before grabbing your mouse, clicking and reading them?

If you’re like most people I’ve surveyed, the answers are: WHO? and WHAT?

The WHO Question: Answering the WHO? question is easy because it involves the FROM LINE of your email messages. I recommend that your FROM LINE never changes. Here’s what mine looks like:

~ Alex Mandossian ~

Specifically, I put a tilda (“~”), then a space, then my first name, then a another space then my last name, then another space, then a second tilda.

That’s it.

I never change my [Read more…]

Rediscover the Adwords Learning Center

By Alex Mandossian

It’s no secret that Google Adwords can become a fast, easy and predictable way to attract targeted website traffic.

Like most marketing strategies, setting up an Adwords account is simple, but not so easy to master. That’s why I recommend you visit Google’s Learning Center.

In my experience, it is hands-down the single most cost-effective way to learn Adwords marketing strategies.

Click here to visit the Learning Center and you’ll find these 9 Modules:

1. Introduction to AdWords
2. Getting Started with AdWords
3. Targeting
4. Costs and Billing
5. Tracking Ad Performance
6. Optimizing Ad Performance
7. The AdWords Toolbox
8. Google Analytics
9. Managing Client Accounts

You can count on [Read more…]

Got “Affiliate Signup” Access On Your Blog?

By Alex Mandossian

alex-point-up1 Do you see Affiliate Signup button (the one I’m pointing at) on the upper left side of this blog?

I published that button a week ago (as an experiment) to test if I’d get a “passive” spike in attracting new Affiliate Partners and so far, I’ve doubled my daily Affiliate sign-up rate.

Even if this “doubling” effect doesn’t continue, “shame on me” for not adding that button to my blog sooner!

How about you? Do you have an affiliate program? Do you have a blog?

If you answered “YES” to both questions, then I encourage you to ask yourself this question before you put your Affiliate sign-up button on your blog:

“Do I want my Affiliate Program to be ‘closed’ or ‘open’?”

A “closed” program is typically only available to Affiliates who have also purchased one of your offers. An “open” program is available to anyone who is in good standing with you and wants to promote your offers.

For the first 8 years of my online marketing experience, I had a “closed” affiliate program. But it is now “open” as a result of wanting to build-out the AskAlexToday “outer circle” calls held on the first Thursday of each month.

Turning Pro: The difference between an “amateur” and a “professional” is $1. The moment you make your first dollar, you’ve turned “pro” from my point of view.

Since my goal to get you to “turn Pro” as fast as possible, I’ll [Read more…]

A Parody on Client-Vendor Relationships

Do You Measure Your “Critical Drivers” Daily?

“Changing the Channel”

The 3 Common Mistakes Info Marketers Make

Vote For The “Tagline” You Prefer Most

Create More Traffic with Articles

Here’s Why Beauty Is More Than Skin Deep

Email “FROM” Lines vs. “SUBJECT” Lines

Got “Affiliate Signup” Access On Your Blog?

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