Erich Stauffer

Tag: Content Marketing

  • The Content Carousel

    What’s the hook gonna be?

    When I was in college I used to wish I could be the guy who made up the headlines for the local newspaper. I had no idea how much it paid, but I was sure that everyone at the newspaper wanted that job and it was incredibly hard to get. Little did I know that within a few years everyone would be running their own “newspapers” via their blogs, social networks, and podcasts – all of which require writing great headlines.

    While Copyblogger says to always write the headline first, I find that when I’m writing the post, I don’t always know what it’s going to be about until I’m done. However, when I’m asking other people to write posts for me, I write the title first so they write about what I want them to. For this post I just copied and pasted a title I had used for the subject of an email (which is another area where the right “headline” matters a lot).

    The Content Carousel

    Email as a marketing tool

    Email is one of the newest forms of networking, which has always been an important aspect of business development. Modern tools like social media have made connecting easier than ever before, but that hasn’t reduced the value of email, nor has it meant that writing emails is easy. The art of creating powerful emails and subject lines is still a fine skill.

    It may seem like you’re just going around and around The Content Carousel. Some days you’re up and some days you’re down. When you get done, you’re right back where you’ve started. The more you get content out, the more you have to make. And then it’s Publisher’s Clearinghouse Day and the barcode scanner breaks. Okay, maybe it’s not that bad, but is there an end?

  • Too Much Content – Advice I Love to Ignore

    If I had a dollar for every time I’ve been told there is too much content I’d have, like $5.

    The thing I see right away in the content is that there is far too much content. MORE PICTURES!!” -Sam, Web Designer, 11/16/2012

    I agree! We need more pictures. Who’s going to take them?

    When people say that a website needs less text, what they are really describing is a graphic design problem. They want a zero-entry, spoon-fed, baby-stepped introduction to the content. “Start me off with two-to-three words and a picture. If I like what I see, I’ll keep going.”

    Too Much ContentType text layout is just as important as the pictures used on a website. Large fonts, small fonts, bold fonts, and font spacing can all play towards the readability of a site. A web site can be filled with text and still be readable as long as the text is organized correctly.

    Okay, I get websites, but what about Social Media?

    This morning one of my managers emailed me a link to Mashable’s Sorry, Marketers, You’re Doing Facebook Wrong. In it the author goes over a recent report that states, “When it comes to posts, less is more,” and “suggests a self-imposed 80-character wall for Facebook posts.” People are so “bombarded” with posts that we need to limit what we’re saying down to 80-character posts in order to get people to like us.

    How about we make the posts as long as is appropriate for the material and the medium? For longer posts, consider writing an ebook, white paper, or a long blog post. Longer social posts are socially acceptable on Google+, but not as much on Tumblr or Facebook (Google+ tends to have a more intellectual crowd).

    So is a ton of content good or bad? I’m confused.

    Imagine if Google had the choice between serving up your 80-character post or your 10,000 word essay. Which one would it choose? The one that answers the question. Google wants to deliver the best results so that people keep using it and so they can keep selling ads. Aim to answer people’s questions (ie. add value) and it doesn’t matter how long your content is.

    I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” ― Mark Twain

    Neil Patel, a content marketing expert, recently wrote How Long Should Each Blog Post Be? In short, he found that the more established a brand is, the less they have to write. Conversely, the less established a brand, the more they have to write. This is how Nike can get away with short taglines in their advertisements, but newcomers have to use long sales letters to convince buyers.

    One other aspect to consider is market sophistication levels. At sophistication level 1, no one knows what your product is or what it does. It’s totally unique and so it needs a lot more information written about it. At level 2 there are competitors so you’re only talking about what makes your product different. Each of the 5 levels states less and less about what the product actually does.

    Content Length is Contextual

    A good content marketer will take into account the medium he’s writing for, the target audience, and the market sophistication level of the product when determining how much content is too much content. Blanket statements like “there’s too much text” or “people don’t like to read” are simply not true without context. There is a time and place for all types of content length.

  • Content Management Systems vs. Managing Content

    If I were tweeting today I would have wrote: WordPress is not so much a content management system as much as a content display system.

    Content Management Systems vs. Managing Content

    A content management system (CMS) designed by Erich Stauffer would allow content to be platform-agnostic. In DRY (don’t repeat yourself) terms, the content would be an object who’s repurposing could be tracked. Essentially, the content management system would not store the content, but report on the status and whereabouts of the content. Let me explain with an example.

    Example: A blog post is written in WordPress. The dashboard in the CMS sees this new post via RSS and prompts the viewer to describe (via checkboxes) whether or not the material has been repurposed as a video, soundcloud, podcast, slideshare presentation, or as part of an email has been backlinked from Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

    In essence, the CMS would work more as a marketing automation workflow tool – guiding you through the process of wringing out as much value from each initial post as possible. This same process could be accomplished via any sort of trusted system: pencil and paper, Word worksheets, Excel spreadsheets, Trello, or even WordPress itself via custom code.

    I have yet to do it manually even once, yet I have recommended it to others many times. I’m not sure a tool would make me want to do it more, but ‘doing’ is not what I do. ‘Changing’ is what I do. That’s how I’m wired and I’m fine with that, but it doesn’t mean the ideas aren’t good or helpful for production workers who are more comfortable creating content in a structured environment.

    It’s not that I don’t do stuff. I do practically whatever anyone tells me to do. I guess it would make more sense to put that line in context. I once worked in a corporate department where my boss used an analogy about us being the rudder and ‘ops’ being the engine. I had very little ‘corporate’ experience prior to working there and had never worked as a business analyst before. (I am very thankful for the opportunity as I feel it was one of the best jobs I ever had.)

    As a result of my intial ignorance of how to be a business analyst, I wasn’t aware that other people had a similar or different opinion on the subject of how organizations should be organized. I only knew of it as ‘how my boss thought’. It wasn’t until after I visited the “Indianapolis Leadership Circle” (formerly known as the Leadership Mastery Group) put on by Tony Piazza that I heard something similar from the speaker, Scotty Bevill. He said (paraphrased for convenience):

    [Project managers] don’t like to run things – we like to build, change, and refine things. That’s just who we are as people.

    I use that word “people” specifically as Scotty was very adamant about business being “people dealing with people” and that we shouldn’t try to take the “human” out of who we are. The people in the room at the leadership meeting were mostly project managers who were mostly former IT workers. The other people in the room were current IT workers (such as myself, who is currently an IT Specialist in my day job). This is more of a belief about who we are as workers, not as much about the willingness to do or not do work. People like us (project managers and business analysts) prefer to be change agents, not production workers.

    Content Management Systems vs. Managing Content

    Permission to speak freely? Okay, for a second here I’m going to throw out all preconceived notions of what I should or should not do, what I am or am not capable of, and what does or does not make business sense. I’m just going to say what I think I want to do and then step back to see what sticks. As Scotty Bevill says, “Start with what is known.” Here’s what I know: I have found a way to add a sales funnel dimension to keyword research. Let’s call these “buyer keywords”.

    • Once you have identified ‘buyer keywords” you can start to write content that attracts those searchers.
    • Once content is created it can be both backlinked from social media and repurposed into other content.
    • Once visitors start coming to the content, the content can be optimized to increase conversions.

    Compendium, a business blogging platform which recently got purchased by Oracle, has 3 steps to create content which are 1) Research 2) Organize and 3) Create. I’d like to create a service that does 1) SEO Keyword and Competition Research 2) Creates and Manages Content and 3) does A/B Optimization.

    Content Repositories

    Update: Since writing this I’ve since discovered something called a “Content Repository“. There are several types, but what they all have in common is a clear separation between the content and the presentation of the content. What I’m still looking out for (and willing to provide as a service until software can be built around it) is a way to track all content like a database and know when and/or how often it’s been linked out via social media or to certain social bookmarking sites and whether or not it’s been repurposed to a pre-defined selection such as Youtube, Soundcloud, or Podcast.

    So when you take what I consider to be my ‘flux capacitor moment’ where I realized I had this ‘super power’ to attract customers to me by writing what matters to the customer and add in what I’ve since learned about content marketing, customer acquisition systems, and customer development I’ve got a knowledge base that is poised to be leveraged with the right content management system. By system I mean the methods (processes + tools) that can multiply the efforts of a content marketer by first finding out who is already seeking their product and writing directly to that person.

    I’m not sure how to do this, but those are my collection of ideas.

  • Customer Acquisition Systems in a Marketing Ecosystem

    You may have heard of “marketing platforms“, but I’d like to introduce what I’d like to call “marketing ecosystems”.

    What is a Marketing Ecosystem?

    While a marketing platform contains a ‘home base’ such as a web site and its corresponding marketing channels such as Twitter, Facebook, and Books – a Marketing Ecosystem takes a slightly broader view and encompasses:

    • The Marketing Platform
    • The People Doing the Marketing
    • The Processes of the Platform & the People
    • The Technology used by the People
    • A/B Testing, Events, Analytics, SEO, Twofers

    Customer Acquisition Systems in a Marketing EcosystemA Marketing Ecosystem is a Customer Acquisition System that funnels traffic and buyers from the Marketing Platform into a trusted Onboarding System that has feedback loops to the Marketing Platform.

    The outputs are blog posts, videos, social shares, books, events, products, and services. The inputs are traffic, phone calls, email, email sign-ups, new clients, and revenue. I’ve written before about how books are the new business cards, but now books can be your advertising too.

    Licensing & Commercialization of Intellectual Property (Twofers)

    In marketing terms, this is referred to as “repurposing content“. Content is the energy that keeps this Marketing Ecosystem running. Content creates traffic. Traffic leads to revenue.

    The most effort should be spent on making the best content possible. Marketers will say “make it share-worthy” or “remarkable“, but let’s get back to basics. It needs to be quality. Quality attracts quantity. This is the core of Content Marketing.

    An Example of Content Flow Through the Marketing Ecosystem

    A trusted, knowledgeable person is mined for their insight. This insight is edited into a series of blog posts, a book, and several videos. In each of these marketing channels, backlinks are placed to buy a product or service and sign up for an email list. The same content is then sent to this email list with more links to buy products or services, but everything should be tested.

    Test Everything (Beta Title for this Section Until Further Tests Completed)

    Test Everything is a Marketing Ecosystem tenet. In SEO, conversions, and sales, the single most important element is the TITLE of the page, post, book, or sales brochure. In books, the cover is the second most important element. But how do you test? Using Facebook, Twitter, and Google Ads, test titles and covers until a significant improvement in sales is discovered.

    Don’t Forget About the People or the Products and Services

    Remember that this Marketing Ecosystem is made up of people talking to people who have problems that the products or services solve. People are messy, emotional, and rarely rational. They make decisions based on copy, design, urgency, FAQs, or personal referrals. And keep in mind that the people who answer the phone or emails also have emotions – so they need properly trained, but all of this cannot happen without quality products and/or services.

    The marketing ecosystem can be perfect, but it will implode if the product or service is awful. A Marketing Ecosystem Engineer must ascertain whether or not a product or service is worth supporting or whether the product or service first needs further developed.

    On Building a Customer Acquisition System using a Marketing Ecosystem

    Once a marketing ecosystem is fully understood and the product or service has been fully vetted, a Customer Acquisition System can be built. This system would provide the editing and implementation of the web and social design, content creation, distribution, events, referral connections, email marketing, onboarding training, and do A/B testing and analytics. This system could be offered as a service.

    An Example of a Customer Acquisition System at Work

    A dentist is interviewed for his dental knowledge. This is turned into a series of blog posts and videos. Each of these have the opportunity to directly sell or add to an email list. The blog posts are turned into a book, which is sold on Amazon. This book also has links back to his products and services + the ability to sign up for his email list. The dentist can now claim that he is a published author. Each title and cover is A/B split tested to ensure the highest ranking and payout – and ultimately increased conversions.

    How I Have Applied This System in the Past

    I have attempted to create and use a system like this by taking some of my most popular blog posts on Erich Stauffer figurines (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) into an ebook on Amazon. However, I did not test the cover and feel that its design has hampered it’s sales. My Youtube channel is called “TheBlogReader” because it was meant to record me reading my blog posts as a form of repurposing content. I only did that a couple of times though, however I still recommend it to my clients, but they hardly ever want to do it. Maybe they are expecting me to do it for them. Video is one of the things I am going to be working on more this year.

    How to Create a Customer Acquisition System

    I’d like to say I have this all figured out, but I’m still learning and trying new things. I’m going to apply some of these principles to a new project I’m working on – one that I can’t share yet – but if you run a business in the Indianapolis area and want to talk about it, please let me know.

  • Content Marketing

    5 Ways to Create Great Content Marketing:

    • Write What Matters to the Customer – Write from your customer’s point of view. Take the time to figure out what they care about – not just the features of your product. In other words, think like a salesman and do your homework. Go where your customers are hanging out online and see what issues they are having with your product or products like it. Write the answers to these problems. Be the answer to there problems.
    • Be Human – Computers have evolved. They can now write articles (1,2, 3), but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about bleeding on the page. Share your mistakes along with your triumphs – like how I wrote over a year ago that my new focus was on content marketing yet I’m just now writing this post. I’m human and I run a small business. This means I am not a machine and can adapt on the fly and relate to humans.
    • Provide Evidence – While you wouldn’t know it from reading this article, pictures and video are the best evidence and it’s what people look for most when they are shopping for a new product or service. If you can’t throw up a gallery or make a short video then at least offer some case studies to show that your product works and some real, believable testimonials from clients who have used your products or services.
    • Tell Stories – Ever notice how great speakers start off by telling a story? It pulls you in and causes you to listen in for the rest of the presentation. Stories are how our brains remember things. That’s probably why Jesus used parables to answer questions. He knew that if he simply answered the questions the answers wouldn’t have had the same effect. Stories stick and to learn more, read Made to Stick by the Heath brothers.
    • Do Something Worth Sharing – This is one of the hardest and most profound steps to content marketing. Why? Because it means you have to actually be good at something, which requires work. Or you have to get out of your chair, go out into the world, and do something worth writing about. That’s not easy to do. That’s because it’s rare – and rare things are valuable. That’s why when people find them they want to share.

    Developing a Content/Market Fit

    Last year I adapted the customer development process for content marketing and developed a way to create content that achieves what I called content/market fit. This content development process allowed our content to be the answer to other people’s problems. When someone would search for the problem they’re having, my client’s solutions are displayed as the answer. This is how I am able to work in sync with Google’s goal of wanting to deliver the most relevant content to users seeking out answers to their problems.

    Content marketing is about writing solutions for your customer’s problems instead of just writing about your products. In 2012 I wrote, “It’s not enough to write content, you have to write what matters to people. Be impactful or risk irrelevance.” Today that’s more true than ever before. Even though I recently wrote on Twitter that content marketing hasn’t worked for this blog, I still believe that content marketing is the best way to attract customers when marketing online.

    Blog Posts about Content Marketing

    In 12 Ways to Make Money Online I wrote about how good content helps attract good ads, adds value to affiliate marketing posts, helps with direct sales, and can even be converted into a book, magazine, or television show. In Write What Matters to Your Customer I wrote about how content is more important than SEO. “Don’t get me wrong, SEO is not useless,” it’s just that good content will beat SEO hands-down every time. This is because Google wants to deliver the best results to it’s customers every time. In my 2012 trends report I wrote about how, “It’s not enough to be creating great content, you also have to temper when you share it.” In other words, don’t be noisy.

    When I wrote about how I started my web design business I wrote, “what mattered more [than SEO] was the creation of content…My business shifted away from SEO and web marketing (although still very important) and into content marketing, management, and analysis. Google is constantly changing it’s algorithm, but content will always remain king. The problem is that as content grows, it starts to need managed.” Later I wrote, “Managing larger back archives of web data used in content marketing. Over the course of time, things you might have wanted to happen in the past to every web post in WordPress may not always apply in the present or the future.”

    Indianapolis-Area Content Marketing

    I help business owners in the Indianapolis area write content for their websites, blogs, or email marketing newsletters that answers their customer’s problems leading to more organic traffic and less customer service issues. By spending more time finding out what problems your customers are having, you’ll spend less time in the customer creation process and more time making money in the company building process. How can I help you build your company? Contact me for a free one-hour consultation or business strategy session. I’ll even type up all of your ideas and send them to you in an email so you have them for posterity. Sound like fun?

  • How to Effectively Deliver a Press Release

    This is a guest post by Leslie Bailey, a freelance writer in Indianapolis.

    As a blogger and freelance writer, I receive dozens and dozens of press releases a week. About 98% of those are deleted…and that’s on a good day.

    Despite what old-school public relations professionals might say, press releases are no longer the only way to get the attention of the media. Social media and modern marketing are far too strong of a driving force in this sector to ignore.

    That’s not to say however, that press releases are a lost cause – if you handle them correctly.

    Here are a few tips from my personal experience that will help you get the most out of your press release. Note: these tips may not apply in every situation; consider each case on an individual basis.

    The easiest way to do this is by checking of the ‘Five Ws’ – Who, What, Where, When, W…and I don’t mean within the copy of your press release.

    WHO

    If you’re targeting a specific audience – what’s that? You’re just sending out mass emails? Let’s start over.

    To get the most value out of a press release, consider reaching out to your subject in a personalized manner. No one wants to feel like they’re part of a cattle call. Unless a publicity email addresses me by name, I don’t read it.

    Blogger, Madam, “Hi there” or my favorite yesterday, “Hi lovey!,” don’t count. Find out the person’s name and address them by such (be sure to spell it correctly!)

    WHAT

    What does the person who you’re contacting cover? If you are trying to pitch the latest and greatest diaper, you should probably note that I don’t have children and have never written anything related to babies. Look at media contact’s previous or recent work to see what topics they usually write about.

    WHERE

    Where are you sending this press release? Make sure it’s the subjects preferred method of communication. I’ve had people contact me through Facebook, Twitter, and other various platforms to ask for my email address. If they’d take a few minutes, they’d see it’s listed very clearly in several places.

    WHEN

    Timing is everything. If your media blast is concerning something Christmas related, it’s as effective to send it in July, as it would be to send it on Christmas Eve. As a blogger, I like a six-week lead but when it comes to print publications, the time varies. For a newspaper story, I need about four-weeks notice while something pointed for magazine, two and a half months. Each publication is different though so be sure to consider the timing of your release.

    WHY

    This is key not only within your content but also when considering your recipient. Why does this person care what you have to say? Referring back to the matter of ‘what’, a food writer isn’t going to care about the latest in fall fashions just as a fashion writer doesn’t care about the best place to create a Fantasy Sports Team.

    IN CONCLUSION…

    You’ll notice that all of these suggestions take TIME. Sure, you’re a busy person and you’re trying to get a message out to the greatest number of people possible but if you can’t take a moment to find out someone’s name, why do they want to spend hours covering your news? They won’t.

    Do your research, make a friendly and personalized introduction and see how much further it takes you.

    You can follow Leslie @Lesalina.

  • Customer Development

    In April of 2009, Steve Blank and Eric Ries gave a presentation on Customer Development at a Startup2Startup Conference in Palo Alto, California. They called it The Customer Development Model, which stated that, “More startups fail from a lack of customers than from a failure of product development”.

    But it’s not just startups, more companies fail from a lack of customers than from a lack of a great product, yet most of the time a company forms around a product and then tries to go out and find customers for that product. What if there was a way you could find the customers first, build a product for those customers, and then create a company? There is and it’s called Customer Development.

    Customer Development is a rigorous methodology developed by Steve Blank to bring the scientific method to the typically chaotic, seemingly disorganized startup process. Blank’s first book, The Four Steps to the Epiphany, detailed the Customer Development process and his second book, The Startup Owner’s Manual, is a step-by-step guide to building a successful startup, offering practical advice for any startup founder, entrepreneur, investor or educator.

    According to Steve Blank, Customer Development involves four steps:

    1. Customer Discovery – Create a hypotheses about who your customer might be and then ask those customers what they want, how they work, what they hate, and what they want more of.
    2. Customer Validation – Develop a repeatable and scalable sales process. Only “earlyvangelists” are crazy enough to buy.
    3. Customer Creation – After proof of sales, creation is where you “cross the chasm”. It is a strategy, not a tactic.
    4. Company Building – (Re)build your company’s organization and management. Re-look at your mission.
    Credit: Steve Blank and Eric Ries

    But what if you’ve already started your company and you already have products? You can still use these same methods to find out who your target customer is, what they want, and how they talk in order to create custom marketing directly to them.

    Steve Blank says, that “Customer Development is about testing the founder’s hypothesis about what constitutes product/market fit with the minimum feature set.” What is product/market fit? I would define product/market fit as the moment when the iterations of your product match the desires and needs of a market in a way that the customer would actually be mad at you if you didn’t let them have the product. Once you’ve achieved this state, it’s time to “fuel the engine” as Eric Ries says, and build it fast. This is the moment you’ll want to attract funding and start adding as many customers as possible (Customer Creation) in order to build a company. In this way, the entire company is built around the customer, not the [by]product.

    Customer Discovery

    Customer Discovery involves “getting out of the building” and doing Customer and Solution Interviews. Part of the Lean Startup methodology, which combines Customer Development and Agile Development to create a business model that values learning, these interviews are the best way to find out your customers wants and needs – so that you can solve them. Like Agile methodology, Lean methodology uses iterative processes and the Scientific Method to hypothesize, test, and learn in order to create a product that customers actually want before building it. Once they have this “product/market fit” they built it as fast as possible.

    What are your customer’s pain points? What are they complaining about? Where do they hang out? What words do they use? It’s only when you know the answers to these questions that you can then determine if they are both able and willing to pay for the solution. The first part of that question is called a Customer Interview.

    Here’s an example of a customer interview:

    You “get out of the building” and meet with a potential customer in your market and ask them what sort of problems they run into on a daily basis. The business owner tells you about having too much spam in their email.

    Now that you know the customer has a problem with too much spam, you create a hypothesis about what product might solve this problem for the customer and set up a second meeting called a Solution Interview to determine what the customer thinks of the solution, if they are willing to pay, and if they are able to pay for it.

    Here’s an example of a solution interview:

    You meet with the customer, present the solution to them, and ask if they would be willing to pay to have their spam reduced.

    Write down any feedback you get because the point is not to sell the product at this point, the point is to learn as much as you can so you can go back and refine the product to create product/market fit. Even if you can’t change the product, you can still iterate your approach or how you you’re using the product to solve that problem. It could be that your product is a better answer to another problem or that a new product is needed.

    Applying Customer Development and Lean Methodologies to Content Marketing

    Joseph Dager, Lean Marketing consultant and author of Lean Marketing House, says that “Lean Sales and Marketing is about applying Customer Value to the Demand side of your business.”

    If you’re solving clients problems you won’t have to do much marketing at all – the customers will seek you out. If they aren’t seeking you out, you might not be solving their problems. But how do you identify what your customers pain points are? The simplest answer is to ask your target client or existing client base what things are bothering them most and when you start to see a trend, you can start to ask if they’d be willing to pay for it to get fixed.

    Content/Market Fit

    We believe that content marketing is the best way to attract customers when marketing online.

    We’ve adapted the customer development process for content marketing and developed a way to create content that achieves a product/market fit that we call content/market fit. We spend more time on content development so that our client’s customers find them. Why? Because the content we develop content that solves a problem for our client’s customers. Whenever they search for the problem they’re having, our client’s solutions are displayed as the answer. In this way, you’re working more in sync with Google’s goals of wanting to deliver the most relevant content to users seeking out answers to their problems.

    We help business bloggers write content that answers their customer’s problems.

    By spending more time finding out what problems your customers are having, you’ll spend less time in the customer creation process and more time making money in the company building process. How can Erich Stauffer help you build your company? Contact us for one hour of free consultation. Just mention this code: CMF.

  • How to Start Making Money on the Side

    Recently a former co-worker and friend asked me about how I started making money on the side:

    I’ve toyed around with a lot of ideas around how to start making money on the side and how to then move from that being side income to my main source of income, but I haven’t pursued anything too closely. I’ve actually picked up a huge work load in applications support at my day job. I’m now the primary support person for items processing, online banking, telephone banking, the company Intranet, the new auto-dialer, all instances of Sugar CRM ( we currently have 3), the online survey tool, the online enrollment tool, and last but not least I’m the main IT contact for the website. So things got really hectic for me, but I’ve realized that if I let myself get lost in that chaos it will only become harder to start making income on the side. For now I’m learning PHP and MySQL and hosting a website using Apache so that I can hopefully branch off and do some freelance work.

    So you’re making more working for yourself than you did at your day job?

    Yes, I’m able to make a living off of doing web design and IT consulting full-time as an independent contractor. The issues I have are not unique to my business though and that’s managing cash-flow. What that means is that although I make enough over time, it doesn’t always come in at the same rate I need it to go out for bills. In other words, it averages out alright, but isn’t always timed right. For example, this month I’m scheduled to make a $400 profit over my bills (something that never hardly happened when I was at my day job), but right now I don’t have anything. It’s like that pretty much every month and that’s because I didn’t have a savings account when I quit and I still don’t. (EDIT: I do now.)

    I don’t think the itch to leave will ever really go away (unless you die inside), but there are ways to test the waters before you jump in. First of all, start thinking of your day job as your biggest client and try to stop ‘expecting’ a paycheck and start trying to ‘earn’ a paycheck. This will put you in the mindset you’ll need when dealing with clients outside of a employee relationship. When I left I had one boss, but now I have over 20 (the number of current clients). My time is not my own. It wasn’t then and it isn’t now. I have to work for them just like I had to work for my past employer. The difference is that if I work more, I get more (and I can charge more). I also get to sleep in and do whatever I want. 🙂

    My recommendation to you would be to take advantage of where you’re at and LISTEN to what people are saying. What I mean by this is if you can start to hear what people’s problems are, stuff they complain about, and/or what their pain points are, that’s the beginning of discovering a product, service, or business that you could start in order to solve that need. You’re in a better position in some ways than I am for finding out that information. I would love to find out what problems commercial loan officers have or what problems their clients have. If you can find a problem that you can solve + a customer that is both willing and able to pay for that solution, you have a business idea. This is called customer development.

    The key is to iterate your business idea until you have what’s called a product/market fit. Eric Ries talks about this in his book, Lean Startups, but you can also read Steve Blank’s work on it. They’ve worked together so they have similar ideas. But basically, the premise is to 1) discover a problem 2) hypothesize a solution 3) interview potential customers about the solution 4) refine the solution. Once you get to a product that the customer would be MAD at you if you took away from them, you have a product/market fit and then you get funding and build like crazy. There are other subtle variations (like starting with a product instead of a customer), but being customer-centric in everything you do will pay dividends.

    One business idea that I don’t mind sharing with you is a “LED light bulb replacement service” where you go to a company like First Merchants and say, “I’d like to save you 40% off your lighting bill and would be happy to show you how it works by converting one of your branches to LED lighting at cost – if you like it, we’ll do the rest of your branches too, if not, we’ll go on our way and thank you for your time.” Essentially, you’re going in, finding out how many bulbs they have, estimating the cost upfront and the cost savings, and then swapping them out in one day. You can even do a buy-back on existing fluorescent light bulbs that you can either trash or sell to someone else. A similar idea is to paint their roofs white.

    A typical day for me is waking up around 8, checking my email for emergency work, working on some projects for customers (usually web edits), reading up on subjects in my field, visit a customer at their location or at a restaurant for a meeting, attend a networking meeting or meetup at night, and then in bed by midnight. I recently joined a networking group called BNI and am active on Meetup.com. I run my own group called Indianapolis Marketing and attend several others as well as Tech Point meetings, which are put on by the State of Indiana. I use blogging to content market online, but that’s less successful than in-person networking for me. I’d be interested in hearing what you’re working on at work or in your ‘spare time’.

    I know you sell your skills at SEO out to companies but I wasn’t sure if you were still scooping up domain names and putting content with ads up or not. Right now I have a few ideas that I’m going to try to do some research on what kind of market might be out there for these services and if it’s something I could/should pursue. For starters I’d like to design an app. In my head I could see where small companies would really enjoy and benefit from having someone build an app for them. I’d also still really enjoy designing a “portal” similar to what our company Intranet offers, but better on every level. Another thing similar to this is I’d like to design a workflow creator tool. The one inside our company Intranet is completely flawed and my employer began hunting for an outside tool to buy to fill this need. I also am looking at starting a few different blogs around things I’m passionate about such as weight loss, video games, “manly skills”, and adventure. I’m sure to really gain profit from these areas I’d have to really pin point a specific something inside of those categories but currently I’m just looking for experience. Once I see the possibility I think I could really define it more.

    Do you still do the blog for money stuff?

    I’m really glad they’ve plugged you in and are using you so much at your day job. The opposite of that is brutal and part of the reason I left. They weren’t using me at all and I had nothing to do. Let me tell you from experience applying at other jobs and learning what I’ve been learning over the last 6 months that any and all programming knowledge is the key to the future in the workplace. Make sure you’re learning as much as you can about PHP, SQL, and how to manipulate and query databases. The trends are all going towards software programming, big data analysis, and cloud computing. You’re in a good spot now, but you may be able to take what you’re learning and be more valuable elsewhere. That’s usually the only way to actually get a real ‘raise’.

    I still have blogs that make me money, but it’s not my primary income and while it seems like ‘passive’ income, it’s really not. If I don’t keep writing and backlinking, the blogs stop making any real money after about a month of non-activity. That’s why it’s so important for businesses to have a blog and a strong social media presence because if they don’t, they don’t show up in Google where they need to. Think about it, there are so many websites out there now that Google can’t possibly keep them all at the top – so they favor the ones with fresh content. This applies to small businesses, blogs, or anything else online. Let me give you a real-world example:

    I had a blog that was making $25 in October, but I wrote like crazy all of November and December. By the end of December, I made $600 from that blog, but after not writing anything for January and February, it’s back to $25. Now some of that was Christmas traffic, but it’s happening across all of my blogs. Unless I write on them and keep them relevant, they aren’t relevant. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still plenty of money to be made in blogs, but you have to do the same thing I told you with starting out a business. You have to find real problems people are having with the product, write to those problems with how your affiliate products are the answer – and the people will come. It’s still work though.

    The best thing you can do is to just do something. You’re not going to get good at it until you try and fail. It’s okay to fail, it’s how you learn. I have way more blogs that failed when I first started, but I started two new blogs in December that now equal my top site. I learned from all of my mistakes and can now do it better, faster. As far as apps go, I don’t want to discourage you from trying, but there are some big learning curves and substantial marketing issues to overcome in the marketplace once you’ve made one. My advice there is to pick a platform, make a simple program, then make iterations of the program, making it do more and more or do a different programs over time, learning as you go. You can actually use your apps as a platform to market your new app releases, meaning your best app should probably be your tenth app (and it makes sense that it would be that way anyway).

    I make more net now than I did “net” at my day job, but while my schedule is different, it’s sometimes twice the work. That’s because when you run your own business you have to work to get the business, and then you have to work to do the business so it’s almost double the work. At my past employer, the work came to me so half of the work was already done. I didn’t have to run an internal marketing campaign around the company asking for work and specifying why I should be the one to do it. Although, come to think of it, I probably should have. It would have riled a lot of feathers, but it strikes me as a better way to live within an organization. Anyway, I’m sure you’ll figure out what you want to do, but remember to enjoy the moments you have. Enjoy your family, and such.

  • How to Get More Customers

    We did a small test to see what were some of the biggest problems business owners had and what we found was the biggest problem was “How to Get More Customers“

    We know that in order to get more customers you must first figure out what your customers pain points are – find out what are the things they are complaining about that you can fix – and then determine if they are both able and willing to pay for them. The first part of that question is called a customer interview.

    Here’s an example: a business owner complains of having too much spam in their email. You respond by creating or finding a product that helps the client reduce their spam and then asking the customer if they would be willing to pay to have their spam reduced. This is called a solution interview.

    Customer and Solution Interviews are part of the Lean Startup methodology, which combines Customer Development and Agile Development to create a more sound Business Model that values learning. Agile and Lean both use iterative processes and the Scientific Method to hypothesize, test, and learn in order to create a product that customers actually want before building it. Once they have this “product/market fit” they built it as fast as possible. Erich Stauffer talks more about this cycle here.

    If you’re solving clients problems you won’t have to do much marketing at all – the customers will seek you out. If they aren’t seeking you out, you might not be solving their problems.

    How do you identify what your customers pain points are?

    The simplest answer is to ask your target client or existing client base what things are bothering them most and when you start to see a trend, you can start to ask if they’d be willing to pay for it to get fixed.

    A less effective, but quicker route is to find out where your customers are complaining or seeking out solutions online. A good way to do this is by using Google Discussion Search to search for problems people are sharing on forums and other discussion groups.

    We did a test search with the term “my business” and this is what we found:

    • My business keeps disappearing from Google Places
    • I need a slogan for my business
    • I need a logo for my Business and possibly a website
    • I need help getting payments to my business
    • What is the best CRM software for my business?
    • Anyone using Dropbox for business file storage?
    • I need a really good name for my business
    • I need help with my business card
    • A client owes my business money… what to do?
    • Can I request to remove my business from Yelp / Qype?
    • I need help getting my business off the ground
    • How to promote a new site?
    • How many of you have tried Offline Marketing ?
    • What’s your most effective marketing method?
    • What is the most important points of business?
    • How to get more customers?

    Once we started noticing a trend, we started recording things we could blog about, solutions for problems like which CRM is best, how to use Dropbox for your business, and how to promote a new website. Our first post is this post, which addresses the last question

    How to Get More Customers?

    1. Identify a need by asking or searching.
    2. Find a solution for that need.
    3. Ask potential clients if they would pay for that solution.
    4. If so, write about it. If not, find a different problem or solution.
    5. Once you’ve written about it, promote it using SEO.

    Essentially you start out with Lean methodologies, then do content marketing, then finish with SEO. So the key to getting more customers is not SEO, it’s knowing you have a product that solves a problem AND people are willing and able to pay for and then writing up content about it on your “home base” and only then doing search engine optimization.