George Blogs!

Today, I came across a very interesting concept in marketing that you can often use as a rule of the thumb to determine whether you’ve gotten your marketing sorted out or if your brand still needs extra tweaking and positioning. The concept I am talking about is that of brand mantra.

What’s a brand mantra, you ask? Put simply, it’s a 3-5 word statement that described your brand, its unique characteristics and points of difference. If it sounds like no small task to accomplish in just 5 words, then you’re right. However, let me ask you the following question - if you, as the owner of the product, cannot explain in five words what your product is all about and what separates it from the competition, how can you expect your customers to know the difference?

To clarify a little bit what I mean, let’s look at some of the more successful out there. For example, Nike’s is as follows:

“Authentic Athletic Footwear”

It’s simply, concise and direct to the point. It doesn’t wander into the realm of complicated mission statements that need a dictionary to interpret, and it is not ridden with corporate buzzwords that sound lovely but, when taken together, don’t mean a thing.

And yet, when you drill down to it, this is what Nike is all about - authentic athletic footwear. Or let’s take another example - Disney’s brand mantra of “Fun Family Entertainment.” This is what Disney stands for, this is what its products are all about, this is how the brand is positioned. You don’t need a 10-page sales copy to explain it - it’s essence can be distilled into three words which perfectly capture the essence of the offering.

Now, let me ask you this question. If you have any info products, for how many of them can you come up with a brand mantra? And if the answer is “none”, then you are probably not doing your marketing right.

Make your opinion heard - do you have a brand mantra? If so what, is it? Post in the comments below - inquiring minds want to know!

Today, I would like to share with you a strategy that is nothing short of miraculous. If applied correctly, it can make you a small fortune with very limited investment in terms of time and effort. And, in the process of applying it, we are going to practice the art of STP marketing (Segment, Target, Position).

Frequent readers of my blog know that it is marketing, rather than content, that sells a product. No matter how great your info product really is, no one but you (and, possibly, your ghostwriter) will appreciate it if no one’s buying your e-book. Further, you will also recall the importance of segmenting your market and targeting your product to appeal to a specific target segment, rather than the market in general.

But here’s something interesting to consider - how much difference is there between market segments? For example, for a divorce-prevention e-book, we can use the following criteria to segment the market:

• Gender (whether the book is aimed at men or women)
• Causes (whether the book deals with divorce prevention in general, or specific causes in particular, such as infidelity, finance, etc)
• Age (recently married couples will likely face difference divorce issues than those who have been together for 20+ years)

Let’s assume now that we segment the market using the Gender criterion, which, for the most part, is the safest way to do it (you don’t want to target a segment that hasn’t got enough prospective customers). With that done, ask yourself the following question - if you were to produce one divorce prevention e-book aimed at women and another aimed at men, how much difference do you think there would be between the two in terms of content?

And the answer is - not a whole lot. To be sure, there will be minor differences - but, for the most part, the real difference between the two products will lie not in content, but in packaging - in other words, the graphics of your site and the style and content for your sales copy. You will want to hit different emotional buttons and appeal to a different audience - but the content of the book will not actually change that much!

Using this trick, you can easily turn a single product into two without too much research on your part. Remember, the product itself is nowhere near as important as how you market and position it to your prospective customers. Better still, a product that is positioned to appeal to a well-defined market segment - rather than the entire market in general - will almost always have better appeal - and, consequently, feature higher conversion rates - than a product that attempts to be mainstream in a segmented market. By splitting your product into two, you’re not only making more money with two products instead of one, but you’re actually making each one of them convert better. If that’s not magic, I don’t know what is!

One of the few positive things about having a brick-and-mortar 9-to-5 job is that, for the most part, your weekends are reserved for your family. Unless you are a high-flying senior executive who has to work around the clock to secure that business deal or go on a business trip to meet your counterpart, weekends are your opportunity to relax, enjoy life and spend some of that money 9-5 money on something other than transportation to your office.

For Internet Marketers, however, the reality is also difference. Our office is what we got to sleep in and wake up to every day. Our desk is the same desk at which we write love letters and have breakfast. Our company computer is the same computer that we use for gaming, watching YouTube and checking e-mail.

In short, as an Internet Marketer, the distinction between your personal and private life is blurred at best. As a result, we often end up pulling in more hours than 9-5 people - weekends included.

Personally, I have no objections to working during weekends. In fact, ever since I got involved in site flipping, I always treated them as an opportunity to get more work done. As they said in Wall Street, money never sleeps - regardless what time of the week it is.

What about you? Do you work on weekends? If so, do you generally do more or less IM-related work? Share your thoughts and let us know!

This post is dedicated, first and foremost, to my World of Warcraft guild on the Bloodhoof server. While, for the most part, they are a great bunch of people whom I thoroughly enjoy killing pixels and polygons with, there are some unfortunate exceptions who, I regret to say, have been less than enthusiastic about my online success. Certainly, my jovial announcements in guild chat on how I successfully sold a site for $597 have been greeted with rather mixed response, ranging from dissatisfaction on even mentioning the subject to accusations of spending way too much time talking about myself.

Since I actively link to this blog on my guild’s forums, I thought I should take this as an opportunity to present my side of the story. I have been accused of being an elitist, arrogant, condescending show-off who can only ever think and talk about himself and the money he makes.

Ladies and gentlemen, here is my official explanation - yes, I am an elitist, arrogant, condescending bastard who lives and dies by the mantra that greed is good and who measures his success and that of others solely by earning power. I don’t care what kind of person you are, whether you help orphaned children or live your life in the likelihood of Mother Theresa. All that matters to me is your ability to make money - regardless of how you do it.

I don’t care if you are a drug dealer or an arms smuggler, if you spend your weekends at the office working towards the next promotion or run your own business from the basement of your mother’s house. If you are making any amount of money, you are successful - and the more money you make, the more successful you are.

Now, I know what you’re thinking right now - that this is an extremely shallow and materialistic outlook on life. But you know what? There’s nothing wrong with being shallow and materialistic, so long as you are able to afford both of these qualities not by the virtue of inheriting money from your rich parents, but by working day and night around the clock to be successful.

Bottom line is, there is absolutely nothing wrong with showing off your success and rubbing it into the faces of others, so long as you - and you alone - are responsible for it. If you were born into an affluent family and are now prancing around blinging your way to popularity, then you are rubbish, pure and simple. You deserve neither the money nor the bling - your parents earned it, not you. In terms of personal success, you are nothing.

Conversely, if you earned each and every penny of your fortune yourself, then, in doing so, you have earned the right to show off and otherwise flaunt your success! Believe me, there is nothing more satisfying than standing up in front of all those have-nots and saying “Yes, I am successful. Yes, where you spent your time whining and complaining about the unfairnesss of life, I pulled myself together and forced my way to success, no matter the personal cost. Yes, I have the guts and the courage to get out there and stake my claim in this world. And, because of this, yes, I am better than you.”

What do you think? It goes without saying that this is a very cruel, harsh and materialist philosophy - but, to me, it reflects the truth of life and focuses one on professional success by doing away with superfluous values such as social justice, equality and charity. All that matters is the unending, unrelenting pursuit of cash - because, ever since the beginning of time, cash has been - and remains - king.

Tushar over at TusharDhoot.com made earlier today a very interesting post that’s pretty much a mandatory read for anyone still harboring illusions or misconceptions about the earning power of online jobs. He basically points out that a high school graduate without a university degree will make an average of $9.25 an hour. Considering that you can easily earn double that working online in one of the jobs he mentions, there’s a valid argument to be made that, if a high school degree is all you have to your name, you’d be better off working online that scrambling around desperately for a full-time brick-and-mortar job.

From experience, I am inclined to agree with him. I make more money online from the comfort of my home than I ever did at my previous part-time job - and I hold two Master’s degrees and live in a fairly high-income country. Not only do you get to make more per hour, but you also don’t need to worry about ever losing your job, dealing with an annoying boss or idiotic co-workers. But more importantly, you get to walk down the street and smile at the fact that you earn more money from home than all those losers who have pigeon-holed themselves into a 9-5 daily grind.

And, if you are ever in the mood to look for a brick-and-mortar job later on, guess what’s going to look more impressive on your CV? That you worked for a year at McDonald’s or that you started your own online business? Having worked in HR, I can tell you from experience that if there’s one type of person all recruiters love, it’s self-starters. Even if your business was not an overwhelming success that propelled you to heights of fame and fortune overnight, simply by having the courage to set up and down your own thing rather than limiting yourself to the employment opportunities out there, you will score a lot of points with the HR person reviewing your CV.