10 Killer Marketing Strategies Any of Which If Implemented Correctly, All But Guarantee You Expert Status in Your Field

So you want to be considered an expert at what you do. I can’t say I blame you. Lots of perks seem to come with it – fame, fortune – regardless of your reasons though, what I’m going to present to you here are 10 very powerful marketing strategies that you can leverage immediately to make that happen.



Marketing Strategy #1 – Press Relations (PR)

It’s one thing if I tell you I’m an expert at what I do, it’s quite another if someone else does – especially the press! Become a dependable resource for the press and watch your credibility, visibility, and reach, soar!



Marketing Strategy #2 – Endorsements & Referrals

Similar premise here as PR but with a slight twist… this is more like trust by association. Getting recommended by someone your desired audience already trusts creates instant leverage and possibility.



Marketing Strategy #3 – Publish a Book

Simply put, there are not many things that seem to bring as much credibility as a well-written and marketed book. People just look at you differently (in a good way) when you’re a published author.



Marketing Strategy #4 – Article Marketing

Posses the power of the pen but not yet ready to write a book? Then article marketing may be just the ticket! You can start out by writing a simple ‘how to’ article on your subject matter and leverage it everywhere. Submit it to dozens of targeted article directories on the Internet… get it published in a major trade publication… send it to prospects as a means to keep in touch and add value… and we can go on and on and on here. This is a very powerful strategy for driving traffic your way – both online and off.



Marketing Strategy #5 – Publish a Newsletter

This is one of the best ways to stay in front of your target market and position yourself as an authority on your topic. Yes there are tons of newsletters already out there however I firmly believe in the premise that there’s enough of an audience available for all of us.



Marketing Strategy #6 – Public Speaking

No fear of public speaking? Then definitely leverage this marketing strategy! I’ve seen masterful performers deliver their spiel and have attendees literally jump out of their seats and run to the back of the room to take advantage of an offer the speaker just made. Just go see T. Harv Eker speak and you’ll know what I mean.



Marketing Strategy #7 – Blogging

Bloggers have their own little universe and it’s hugely popular and addictive! More importantly though, bloggers tend to be very loyal and are active participants – a perfect fit for an expert willing to lead. Combine wit and wisdom in your own blog and you’re golden.



Marketing Strategy #8 – Podcasting

Similar to bloggers, podcasters also have their own little universe packed with a dedicated audience hungry for input. If you’ve got the voice talent, this is an excellent strategy to leverage.



Marketing Strategy #9 – Host a Radio Show

Want to take your podcasting skills up a notch? Then think radio! – Whether offline with traditional radio or online with Internet radio, there is plenty of opportunity and audience here. Not ready to start your own radio show yet? Then become a regular guest expert on someone else’s.



Marketing Strategy #10 – Streaming Video

Video is exploding all over the Internet right now. Amateurs are posting videos everywhere… on their blogs, on their websites, on popular sites such as YouTube… If you’ve got the look, confidence, and charisma to pull this one off, I say go for it – video is very influential – just think movie star.





So in closing, I’d like to leave you with a few implementation tips.



First, you don’t need to do all of these marketing strategies to ensure expert status. My recommendation, just start with the one that resonates the most with you right now and focus on that one until it’s working for you. Become known for your excellence using it and then when and if it makes sense for you, incorporate others as you see fit.



Second, remember the old adage… “Anything worth doing is worth doing well”. So if you’re going to do it, do it to the best of your ability.



And lastly, becoming the perceived expert doesn’t come overnight – it takes consistent, diligent effort, and maybe a few breaks along the way as well to make it happen. So be patient with yourself and trust your instincts.





© 2007 Online Marketing Muscle -- All Rights Reserved.



Want to use this article in your e-zine, blog or web site? You have my blessing so long as you include the following complete blurb with it (including links).



Liked this article? - Then you won’t want to miss Long Island-based marketing consultant, coach, and entrepreneur Dean Mercado’s highly acclaimed marketing blog 'The Motivational Marketer’s Journal'. Additionally, for even more small business marketing and success tips, sample the latest edition of his FREE marketing tips newsletter, the 'Marketing Minute' – a weekly multimedia e-zine designed to give you a jolt of marketing wisdom in less than 5 minutes.



Technorati Tags: Marketing Strategy, Press Relations, Endorsements, Referrals, Article Marketing, Newsletter, Public Speaking, Blogging, Podcasting, Radio, Streaming Video

Secrets of the Internet Marketing Experts Series: 7 Keys to Make Your Website More Search Engine Friendly

"If you make a product good enough, even though you live in the depths of the forest, the public will make a path to your door, says the philosopher. But if you want the public in sufficient numbers, you better construct a highway." - William Randolph Hearst (American Publisher, Editor and Politician, 1863-1951)

How true! - Regardless if we're talking about your offline brick-and-mortar facility or your online facility… your website. You simply need to create that highway leading to your door.

One of the great things about the Internet and having an online presence in the form of a website is that it provides us an excellent means to not only build one highway, but an unlimited number of highways - much of which can be done for little or no cost other than little bit of sweat equity. Is it the be-all end-all? Absolutely not! However, in my opinion it provides one of the best bangs-for-the-buck for small businesses to build those much-needed highways.

The main idea here is to make it real easy for the people you want to find you, to find you. On the Internet, it just so happens that search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN Search facilitate that process and ultimately make the Internet more usable. Now search engines work off the premise of bringing their users the most relevant content for whatever they are searching for. So while it's great for you to put up a website and provide relevant content, it's just not enough. You have to help the search engines understand just how relevant your content really is. You can begin that process by carefully planning out and implementing the following 7 keys to making your website search engine friendly.

Before we get started though, it's important for you to know what keywords people are typing in to these search engines when searching for what you offer. One great way to do that is to use a Keyword Selector Tool such as the one provided by Yahoo in their 'Resource Center' to pinpoint your keywords of choice - So basically if you're selling widgets and the word 'widgets' is commonly searched for (as confirmed by the keyword selector tool), then 'widgets' might be a good choice for your keyword.

Once you've properly targeted your keywords, which might be different for each page of your website, at a minimum, leverage them in the following manner to create relevancy for your keywords in the eyes of the search engines.

1. Use a keyword-rich domain name for the address of your website. For example I provide marketing coaching and consulting services with a major emphasis on online marketing, therefore I use the keyword phrase 'online marketing' in my domain name - hence my URL is www.OnlineMarketingMuscle.com.

2. Use a keyword-rich 'Title' tag in the HTML code of your website. Suffice it to say that a well thought out title tag will have a major impact on determining your websites relevance to the search engines and should be very carefully crafted.

3. Use a keyword-rich Meta 'description' tag in the HTML code of your website. This Meta tag should be used to provide a more detailed description of what your visitors should expect from stopping by your website.

4. Use carefully selected keywords in the Meta 'keywords' tag in the HTML code of your website. This is simply a tag that tells the search engines what keywords they can expect to see throughout your website.

5. Make sure that you use your keywords throughout the content of your website. In the search engine optimization world, we call this your 'keyword density'. As defined in the popular online encyclopedia called wikipedia, keyword density is the percentage of words on a web page that match a specified set of keywords. Failure to do this throws up a flag that your site may not be about what you say it is - and search engines don't typically like that.

6. Use keyword-rich 'Anchor Text' for internal and external links on your website. Anchor text as defined in wikipedia is the text a user clicks when clicking a link on a web page - So instead of using less meaningful or even meaningless text as the label for your hyperlinks, use keyword-rich ones.

7. Use keyword-rich Heading Tags (sometimes referred to as H tags) throughout the content of your website. Simply put… text within the heading tags are typically seen as more important than other text on the page - and keywords used here will appear to be more relevant to the search engines.


So in closing, please note that my intention here was not to technically educate you or anyone else on how to implement these keys - only to bring your awareness to them. If you do not know how to implement them on your website, may I suggest that you schedule some time with either your webmaster or a search engine marketing consultant to discuss doing so as soon as possible.

Additionally I'd like to leave you with a little bit of a heads-up here. The rules of the search engine marketing game literally change every day - yes I did say every day. This is done to keep the playing field fair for all by making it more difficult for people to craftily slant the odds in their favor. However for the most part the 7 keys that I've shared here seemed to have stood the test of time so far and if implemented properly can only help you.


© 2007 Online Marketing Muscle -- All Rights Reserved.

Want to use this article in your e-zine, blog or web site? You have my blessing so long as you include the following complete blurb with it (including links).

Liked this article? - Then you won’t want to miss Long Island-based marketing consultant, coach, and entrepreneur Dean Mercado’s highly acclaimed marketing blog 'The Motivational Marketer’s Journal'. Additionally, for even more small business marketing and success tips, sample the latest edition of his FREE marketing tips newsletter, the 'Marketing Minute' – a weekly multimedia e-zine designed to give you a jolt of marketing wisdom in less than 5 minutes.


Technorati Tags: Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization

WARNING: Look Out For This Small Business Marketing Killer

"Don't wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful." – Mark Victor Hansen

Visualize with me for a moment while I share with you an analogous somewhat satirical tale about 3 airplane pilots desperately wanting to fill their own empty passenger airplane with paying passengers.

Now it just so happens that as much as each pilot wants to load up with passengers, the potential passengers are located at a different airport… so if the pilots really want the passengers, they’re going to have to go where those potential passengers are, let them know they’re there, tell them why they should choose their airplane over the vast array of other transportation options – for example, other planes, trains, buses, cars, etc… And ultimately, persuade them to buy tickets.

So each of the pilots should know what they need to do, right? Well unfortunately knowing what to do and actually doing them are two totally different things. Let’s visualize further.

The first pilot starts his engines and prepares for takeoff. Get ready, get set, no not yet, there’s too many clouds… maybe in a few minutes. The clouds pass… Get ready, get set, no not yet, it’s too early in the week, my potential passengers probably won’t be ready to fly until the weekend. The weekend comes… Get ready, get set, no not yet, it’s getting dark, by the time I arrive, the potential passengers will never see me land. Excuse after excuse after excuse the pilot never pulls the trigger to takeoff. So he just continually taxis his plane around the tarmac in hopes of the perfect flying conditions. Better yet, he starts to wishfully think that just maybe his potential passengers will see him taxiing and buy a ticket… unfortunately for him though, the potential passengers being too far away never see him… and as a matter of fact, they don’t even know he exists… that’s too bad too, he has a beautiful airplane and could’ve provided a stellar flying experience. So the first pilot continually taxis round and round the tarmac until he finally runs out of fuel and money… end result, he quickly goes out of business.

Now the second pilot actually takes off en route to where the potential passengers are. As he approaches the airport he circles it in a holding pattern waiting for the most perfect moment to start his descent and land the plane. Get ready, get set, no not yet, there’s too many clouds… maybe in a few minutes. The clouds pass… Get ready, get set, no not yet, it’s too early in the morning and the potential passengers are probably still sleeping... I’ll try later. Later comes… Get ready, get set, no not yet, it’s too dark out now, the potential passengers will never see me land… maybe tomorrow morning. Excuse after excuse after excuse the pilot never pulls the trigger to start his descent. He eventually runs out of gas and crashes and burns… and as you probably can guess, he’s quickly out of business as well.

Now the third pilot without hesitation takes off en route to where the potential passengers are. He arrives at his destination and as soon as he’s cleared to land, he immediately does so. Once on the ground he makes it known he is there… he makes his case for choosing his airplane over any other options… he makes it real easy, lucrative, and fun to travel with him… so as a result, he sells a few tickets, not as many as he would have liked however, enough tickets to survive another day and try again tomorrow. So tomorrow comes… he repeats this process… except this time he tweaks it a bit based on what his experiences taught him the day before. End result, he sells even more tickets. Now he continues this tweaking process over and over and ultimately, he starts to see his profitability soar.

The moral of this story… perfectionism and marketing do not mix!

Now I’m not going to get into the root causes of perfectionism as that’s a whole other conversation for another day. However, in marketing there comes a point in time where your quest for perfection actually does more harm than good… every tweak you make past a certain point adds less and less value to the overall marketing effort. It is imperative to be able to identify this point and pull the trigger to release your marketing as close to it as possible. That’s not easy to do however trial and error will certainly get you closer than delays driven by perfectionism.

Don’t get me wrong here… Perfectionism when properly applied to certain aspects in business can be a wonderful thing… for example keeping your financial books in order is a great place for perfectionism... Marketing in my opinion however is not.

You also should consider the potential missed revenues or ‘opportunity cost’ that you would be creating for your business by delaying your marketing efforts.

As a marketing coach and consultant I see it all the time… Businesses getting ready, getting set… , getting ready, getting set… getting ready, getting set… and for whatever reason never pulling the trigger to go and do whatever it takes to make it happen. They make the excuses… they look for the perfect conditions… all the while never pulling the trigger… then they wonder why business isn’t as good as they’d like.

So I challenge you to ask yourself… and be honest… which pilot are you going to be today? Your choice has the power to make or break your business.


© 2007 Online Marketing Muscle -- All Rights Reserved.

Want to use this article in your e-zine, blog or web site? You have my blessing so long as you include the following complete blurb with it (including links).

Liked this article? – Then you won’t want to miss Long Island-based marketing consultant, coach, and entrepreneur Dean Mercado’s highly acclaimed marketing blog 'The Motivational Marketer’s Journal'. Additionally, for even more small business marketing and success tips, sample the latest edition of his FREE newsletter, the 'Marketing Minute' – a weekly multimedia e-zine designed to give you a jolt of marketing wisdom in less than 5 minutes.



Technorati Tags: small business marketing

Networking: 5+ Tips to Get the Most Value Out of Your Business Organization Membership

"When you play, play hard; when you work, don't play at all." – Theodore Roosevelt (26th President of the United States (1858 - 1919))


So, you’ve taken the initiative to join a networking group, now what? In a nutshell, go for it… play hard… work hard… make your membership worthwhile. Milk it for all it's worth. How do you do that you ask? Well there are tons of ways; however what I've done for you here is compile a list of 5 staple tips geared to help you get the most value out of your business organization membership.


1. Show Up
As they say in the world of lotto, "you've got to be in it to win it". It's simply not enough to just join the organization on paper though; you really need to show up. Attend the general membership meetings, functions, and events. Isn't the whole idea behind joining a networking organization to network and connect with others? Well you certainly can't do that very effectively if you're not there – so try your luck and come to the dance.

2. Come Prepared To Play
Now there are tons of tips I can pile into this one alone – too much for this article – but here are a few that pack lots of punch.

Every networking organization has its movers and shakers – find out who they are and a take a few minutes to learn a little bit about them. Additionally, peruse the membership directory and pinpoint specific members that you want to network with and do the same. I think you'll find that a little advanced homework can go a long way – generally people can tell if you've done your homework and are usually quite flattered.

Be prepared to introduce yourself as well as be able to answer that dreaded question "so, what do you do?" I recommend having both a 10-second introduction that clearly says who you are, what you do, and who you do it for; as well as a more detailed 30-second version that expands on that a bit to use when connecting more deeply with other members.

Bring plenty of business cards! I can't tell you how many times I've encountered networkers without them – I hate to sound harsh but, in the world of business networking that's just unacceptable.

3. Get Involved
One of the things that separate the good networkers from the great ones are their willingness to get involved beyond the general membership meetings – If there are committees available, they pick the one or ones that resonate with them and participate. If there are leadership positions such as a "Board of Directors", they ante up and let it be known that they're interested. They actively seek to deepen their relationships with the movers and the shakers by getting more involved.

4. Network between Meetings
I don't know of any business organizations that prohibit networking with other members between general meetings – so why wait? Follow-up with those you met at previous meetings and reach out and introduce yourself to others that you want to connect with whom for whatever reason didn't attend.

5. Leverage the "Other" Benefits
Besides the one obvious benefit of networking, most business organizations also provide a variety of other useful benefits to its membership. Not sure what those are exactly? – Ask. For example, you may be able to get yourself and your business listed on their high-traffic web site. Also, there may be member-to-member discounts on products and services that you could take advantage of. Some organizations such as Chambers of Commerce even offer discounted medical and dental benefit plans for its membership. Remember, if you don't ask, you don't get.


So in closing, be clear that no matter what business you're in, it's all about relationships and there's no better marketing strategy to connect with people than networking. Networking really does need to be a core marketing strategy of every business, but remember, if you’re going to do it, go all out and do it to the best of your ability.


© 2007 Online Marketing Muscle -- All Rights Reserved.

Liked this article? Want to use it in your eZine, blog or web site? You have my blessing so long as you include the following complete blurb with it (including links).


Online entrepreneur Dean Mercado, "The Motivational Marketer", is creator of the acclaimed Pumped Up Networking' system geared to explode your business through professional relationships. To learn more about it and to sign up for his FREE eZine the 'Marketing Minute' – a weekly multimedia eZine designed to give you a jolt of marketing wisdom in less than 5 minutes, visit www.OnlineMarketingMuscle.com.


Technorati Tags: Networking, Marketing

The Key Skill That Transforms Good Marketing into Great Marketing

"The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant." –Max De Pree

So… why a quote on leadership? Well essentially at the core, great marketers are great leaders! They not only effectively lead themselves, but their target market as well. Leadership IS that key skill that transforms good marketing into great marketing.

Lead Yourself
For starters, great marketers have a vision; they know where they’re going, they have a rock-solid plan on how they’re going to get there, and they’re willing to do whatever it takes. They have a way with words and have the capacity to properly communicate their vision in such a way that magnetizes them – drawing their target market as well as the best of everything toward them.

Also, they understand exactly how they’re showing up for their target market. They purposely lead that effort – never leaving to chance how they’re perceived. Without having to actually say it, they make it crystal clear to their target market that they would have to be crazy to do business with anyone else but them. Essentially they take charge and lead their own destiny.

Lead Your Target Market
I am definitely of the opinion, and I’m sure I’m not alone here, that most people want to be led and spoon fed – they don’t just want you to tell them where the gold mine is or how to get there, they want you to hold their hand, walk them into it, mine the gold for them and give it to them.

So with that in mind, what do great marketers do? They make the most of that idea. They paint a before and after picture for their target market – clearly showing and glamorizing what’s possible if they follow the great marketers lead. They educate their target market in a way that empowers them to make great decisions – decision they can be proud of. Great marketers are careful not to over-promise and are confident that they can over-deliver enough to as author Tom Peters puts it, WOW their target market. They know marketing is all about persuasion, not manipulation. They confidently stand behind their product or service, offering iron clad no hassle guarantees. And we can go on, and on, and on here but I think you get the picture here.

So in closing, remember that great leaders make great marketers; great marketers create great marketing; and great marketing leads to great results. Additionally, always remember that it’s your responsibility to not only lead yourself, but your target market as well – both their success as well as yours, depends on it!


© 2007 Online Marketing Muscle -- All Rights Reserved.

Liked this article? Want to use it in your eZine, blog or web site? You have my blessing so long as you include the following complete blurb with it (including links).

Online entrepreneur Dean Mercado, "The Motivational Marketer", is creator of the acclaimed 'Pumped Up Networking' system geared to explode your business through professional relationships. To learn more about it and to sign up for his FREE eZine the 'Marketing Minute' – a weekly multimedia eZine designed to give you a jolt of marketing wisdom in less than 5 minutes, visit www.OnlineMarketingMuscle.com.


Technorati Tags: marketing, leadership