Every Monday morning I have a new ritual where I do a planning session for the week.

The idea is that only a few things really bring in the money.

1.  What will you do for a customer promotion?

If you have an email list, you need to do a promotion to it.

I like to send out new promos on Tuesday or Wednesday. But really, any day will work.

If you’re creating a new bonus, you need to plan that out. 

If you have a promotion from the prior week with a deadline, remove the deadline.

2.  What will you do for traffic?

In my case, right now I have seo going and promos with my affiliates.  I plan to add in a ppc banner campaign soon.

I’ve made the mistake in the past of NOT saying anything!  This is dumb.

One of your priorities has to be communicating to your affiliates.

3.  What’s broken that needs fixed?

For example, this past week, I found out that for various reasons we left off our email collection devices from our web pages.

This means not only do I have to fix that I have to create a system to detect if this breaks again in the future.

I’ll add that to our regular systems.

4.  What’s the big picture?

I have certain early warning indicators I follow to identify if any trends are out of alignment. These indicators are extremely important to pay attention to.

And if you do it correctly and stick to the discipline of it, you’ll save your bacon many times over a long career.

These are the MOST important things.  The lifeblood of your business is your traffic. So you have to make sure every week you’re paying attention to it.

You’ve gotta do customer promotions because those  are your bread and butter.  Now, you can promote affiliate products.  Or your own. 

You can promote with stand alone emails, ads inserted into content emails or ads next to your blog posts.

But ABC — Always Be Promoting.

I’ll repeat it.  The ABC of business is Always Be Promoting.

A business is a machine that outputs sales.  Stated differently, it’s a set of processes, a System, that follows a repeatable formula for making sales and netting out a percent of thoses sales into bank deposits in your personal account.

You’ve always got to be making sales or promoting. Because that’s what a business is and does.  That’s the function of it.

The function of a business isn’t to change the world althoough that might be a side effect of it.

The function of a business is to make sales. Pure and simple.  And, of course, to net out a percentage of those sales into bank deposits for the business owner.

This does NOT mean you only promote to your list and avoid giving good content.

It DOES mean that you always want to promote something.

For example, I’m ramping up production of a new product on traffic.  So I subtly or not-so-subtly will send out emails about traffic over the next few weeks.

If your list is the lifeblood of your business, then your systems are the lifeblood of your lifeblood.

A system is a set of repeatable processes.

The speed of business is FAST.

Trying to create from scratch everytime doesn’t work. When you find something that works, codify it and re-use it.

If problems crop up, implement a system or a system tweak to prevent that from happening.  This is where your Early Warning System comes into play.

If you have proper indicators in place, you’ll be aware if something goes astray.

Then just as important as your systems are the people who implement them.

You can have the greatest process in the world but if there’s no one to operate the process, why bother?

In the beginning, that person is you. But with all the outsourcing opportunities available via outsourceplan.com,
my affiliate link for John Jonas’ system, you can easily afford to have basic outsourcing in place.

I think a lot of people get confused about business. But really it’s simple.

You either have a group of people who are passionate about buying stuff or you don’t.

You either get sell stuff to ‘em or you don’t.

You either net out a percentage of those sales or you don’t.

If your sales exceed your overhead, you put something in your bank account.

You either have repeatable processes or you don’t.

You either have a formula for selling or you don’t.

People on rare occasion post on the blog, “I’ve been in IM X time but haven’t put money in my bank account. How come?”

Because they don’t get what a business.  A business is a sales machine.  If they “got that” they’d AT LEAST know where their machine was breaking down.

Are you able to target your market with a message of  benefit they want?

Are you able to get them to join your email list?

Are you able to to send them emails?  And do you?

When you send emails, do they open them?

When they open your emails, do they click?

When they click, do they read?

When they read, do they click order?

When they click order, do they input credit card info and click submit?

But just to go, “I tried and it didn’t work.” That’s total crap.

A business is a System, a set of processes. And you CAN track to see where your processes are breaking down, if they are.

Conversely, if things are going swimmingly well, you CAN find out WHY that is happening also so you can do more of that!

You do a number of things others have found to work.

Some will work for you. Some won’t.

You do the ones that work and create a repeatable  system for them.

You tweak the ones that don’t work and try again.

So let’s say you have a product but can’t sell it. Do you know ONE target audience who has already proven they’ll buy a similar product?

Do you know HOW to reach them with a benefit-rich message?

When you do, do they join your email list?

See, you just take it step-by-step until you find out where you’re breaking down, if you are.  Or if your system is working, you look for areas you can improve.

Now, in my business, I like to keep things simple.  So my core formula is simple:

Affiliate traffic > sales letter > order > commission

Affiliates send traffic to my sales letters that result in orders and a commission back to affiliates.

This is the basic system I outlined years ago at gimmesecrets.com and STILL works as written.

Now, to build your list, you use a sidebar email capture form and also a dhtml slide in.  How to do all that stuff is covered in thewritersecret.com and also the video training available as a separate purchase at quickiestart.com.

My good friend Kirt Christensen who is a ppc magician does this formula for a client of his:

ppc > email capture >  webinar > $3,000 sale

One or two webinars per month = $500,000 banked

But the market is extremely rabid.  The pitch is great.  And
the ppc budget is substantial.

I could go on and on with examples.

Keep Ockham’s Razor in mind:  All things being equal, the simpler process is better.

I wrote a whole ebook about that principle and how to apply it to your business.  I took down the sales letter because of the new FTC rules but you might still be able to snag a copy direct from the order form: http://www.marlonsanders.com/ockham/

The more complex a process, the less I’m impressed by it.  The more it has all these moving parts and you need to spend tons on a coaching program just to try to implement it, the less impressed I am.

The more you say, “OK, that’s simple. I can do that.”  The more you’re on THAT side of the equation, the better of you are.

There is BEAUTY in SIMPLICITY!

Marlon Sanders helps people with hopes and dreams figure out how to turn those into reality by selling stuff on
the Internet.  http://www.kerriesheehan.com/thewriterssecret

Bookmark and Share

Please consider buying me a coffee if you find my content useful.

Related posts:

  1. Will Your Marketing Model Be Dead In The Morning? If you're using a product launch model, your merchant account...
  2. What Is Pay Per Click Marketing? If you’ve looked into advertising your website, you probably wonder,...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

AFFILIATE DISCLOSURE:

It is advisable to assume that any mention of a product or service on this website is made because there exists, unless otherwise stated, a material connection between the product or service owners and this website and should you make a purchase of a product or service described here the owner of this website or the content providers of this website may be compensated. To learn more please Click Here.

Tagged with: • •

Filed under: Internet Marketing

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!