Over the next several months I’m going to share new information with you
that, if you’re like me, will change how you’re approaching and
interacting with your prospects.

This first of several messages will give you an overview and, maybe like
me, you’ll have an “ah-ha” moment. Mine was dramatic.

Tracking and measuring a web site’s performance is critical in
terms of making informed decisions about “what to do next.” I
recently read that over 90% of web sites don’t have basic
measurement systems in place. Unbelievable. Here are 3 that will
help you measure what’s going on.

First question: how effectively are you using testimonials and endorsements in
your business?

What?

You’re not using them?

Over the past several Mondays Dan has been talking about how each of those of us who are business owners need to playing a new ball game, and in a sense playing it defiantly.

Part of the new ball game, as he noted last week, involves greater flexibility, agility, and speed. And these are have-to’s. Or else.

It’s understanding that we are truly moving at breakneck speed into a new time, a new economy, and we have to change fast. By the way, it’s more than just about survival or maintaining or growing our business; it’s also related to our understanding that very few of our competitors will do what we’re doing…in some circles they call that establishing a competitive advantage.

How much time and money are you investing to get better? To learn more? To truly become an expert in your field? To become “unconsciously conscious” in at least one area?

This is a new brand economy with brand new challenges and the same old marketing stuff just ain’t going to cut it anymore. Time to roll up your sleeves and get to work revamping your entire marketing plan. (Paying attention to my messages every week is going to help a lot too!)

This attitude opens up a huge opportunity for the smart, savvy marketing-oriented business to literally “scoop up” those underserved, undersold, and under appreciated clients and customers. If this thought doesn’t get you excited (as I was leaving my meeting in Baltimore last week), check your pulse.

Took a week off preparing my mind and body for 5 days in Chicago at the Glazer-Kennedy Marketing and Money-Making Superconference; arrived last Wednesday afternoon and returned to Cincinnati late Sunday night.

Took over 30 pages of notes, including 15 from Dan Kennedy at a special Sunday session. While the conference was great (I always look at these from an R.O.I. perspective), the networking and other opportunities make my time there very valuable. I left with ideas for two new businesses which I suspect we’ll kick off within the next 3 to 4 months.

While the conference focused on marketing (as I’ve detailed in previous emails and my monthly printed newsletter) there was a great deal of discussion about growing your business in these economic times and preparing yourself and your business for the New Economy that will come out of the R (pick your word).

I have transformed myself and my business over the last two-plus years into a total focus on marketing. I now belong to three different mastermind groups which take almost 24 days a year of my time. I’ve had people ask me why I “spend” (their words, not mine) that much time. I choose to look at it from an investment perspective.

Why do I share that with you?

At the end of the day, it all comes down to attitude. And I’ve morphed myself into having a total success attitude.

I see winners in all types of businesses having a positive attitude, an open mind, and an ability to see opportunity in EVERYTHING. They listen to other successful people (they don’t spend much time with unsuccessful (in their mindsets) people.  They can spend several minutes with other winners and walk away with new ideas that will help take their businesses to the next level. Plus, they take responsibility for their successes and failures. They see failures as events only, as something they can learn from.

People on the other side of the coin, the so-called “losers,” have a negative, can’t be done attitude and see disaster or failure in every situation. Since they are close-minded, they couldn’t recognize an opportunity if it whacked them in the face. They have a “fixed pie” mentality, focus on their losses and never on their gains, and their language is filled with, “but…, if only Ida, etc…”

It comes down to simple choice as to which side of the coin you choose to focus.

Choose success.

Mike Grehan just wrote a fascinating article at Click Z regarding testing; he’s a big fan, as am I, of the Eisenberg brothers and their team at Future Now.  I’ve bought every one of their books and will buy their newest, “Always Be Testing.” If you’re serious about improving your online results, you should also consider buying it; Google’s Website Optimizer, on which the book focuses, has been a staple of our client testing methods for the past several month.

This caused me to think about a talk I gave last week to a group of small business owners here in Cincinnati.  I asked the question, “How many of you know the value of a new customer, client, or patient?”  No hands were raised.  I’m not surprised by this response anymore, but it really is one of the basic numbers one has to know about his or her business.  If you don’t know what new customers, clients, or patients is worth (either initial or life time value), how can you make intelligent decisions about how much to invest in acquiring them?  I think the answer is, “You can’t.”

And it’s really not that hard.  The first decision one has to make is the hardest, that is to commit to finding it out.

This leads to the bigger picture of having a mindset of “test, measure, refine, and do it all over again.”  It’s a little easier to accomplish in the online world, but one still has to commit to do it.

One of our hard and fast rules is that we measure, and we measure everything.  We’ve made the business decision to not engage with clients that won’t commit to putting measurement systems in place.

All of this gets back to Mike’s post.  All of our marketing (and I believe, business) efforts are really just a test.  None of us knows all the answers upfront.  That’s why we need to continually “test”, to try to improve our last best efforts.  Google’s Website Optimizer gives you a fairly simple way to test all types of web page factors.

As a wise man one said, “When you get right down to it, life is a test.  If it weren’t you would have been given more instructions.”

Here’s to testing and measuring.