Erich Stauffer

Tag: Internet Marketing

  • What is Digital Marketing?

    Digital marketing is the promotion of products or brands via one or more forms of electronic media. A digital marketer is someone who focuses on customer acquisition and who has a passion for increasing conversions. Digital marketers drive new customer growth through the creation and hands-on execution of strategies across multiple channels like the website, social media, and paid advertising.

    The best digital marketers are the ones who focus on the customer. Why not focus on the company? Because the more the digital marketer knows about the customer, the more successful the conversions will be. The best digital marketers become an expert on their customers.

    Digital marketers work with a variety of marketing channels, which means they not only have to manage multiple platforms, but also relationships with internal staff and external agencies.

    The best digital marketer is a results-oriented person who has the analytical skills to break down complex problems, creativity to identify and develop new, scalable programs, and the skills to lead rigorous testing, measurement and iteration to improve results continuously. So what skills are needed?

    Digital Marketing Skills

    • Self-management – be able to manage your day-to-day tasks in order to achieve long-term and short-term goals.
    • Communication – sounds cliche, but here it’s important. Things need documented and communicated constantly.
    • Business analysis – the ability to distill information and present it in a way that other people understand it.
    • Domain knowledge – analytics, email marketing, paid advertising, retargeting, SEO, direct mail, video, and podcasting.
    • Curiosity – seek out and test innovative opportunities to expand visibility and customer acquisition through new channels.
    • Leadership – be able to lead a small team to help meet acquisition objectives by hiring, training, inspiring, and coaching.
    • Vendor management – be able to manage relationships with external agencies who specialize in various marketing domains.
    • Agile/Lean – a person of continuous optimization who develops and implements a strong framework for iterative testing.
    • Planning – be able to develop and manage long-term plans to meet long and short-term business objectives.
    • Technology – digital marketing and technology are inescapably intertwined. Be able to support the marketing technology.
    • Excel – you must have the ability to turn empirical data into insightful, strategic decisions for decision makers.
    • Strategy – the ability to think strategically and plan the overall direction of the company’s marketing strategy.
    • Google Analytics – you must understand how to read and interpret web analytics and testing/optimization techniques.

    Using the skills above you will be able to develop and execute the marketing strategy to meet the goals established for your company regardless of the budgeting constraints. You will perform weekly, monthly, and quarterly analysis reports across all marketing channels, which will report on your progress towards the stated goals. Are you up for the challenge? I am.

    My name is Erich Stauffer and I’m a digital marketer who is passionate about customers, conversions, and collaboration. One of my favorite things to do is to “check my stats”, which means logging into the e-commerce dashboard and Google Analytics to review conversions. I’ve managed Google Adwords, Twitter and Facebook ads, and helped run and train teams of other marketing specialists.

    I love to document what I do, which means I’m either updating a spreadsheet, an Evernote note, or a Dropbox folder. When new staff are brought on board, I’m the guy who trains them how to use the marketing systems and when there is new marketing technology, I’m the one trying it out. I love marketing, technology, and how it all works together. That is what I’m passionate about and that’s how I can help.

    How can I help you with your digital marketing needs?

  • Affiliate Marketing with Mini-Sites

    Andrew Hansen says he maintains 20 mini-sites that make anywhere from $300 to $3000 a month and together they make him “5 figures a month”. Lets assume that one site is making $300 and one is making $3000 and “5 figures” means $10K a month. That would mean that the other 18 sites would be making $373 on average a month or to put it another way, all 20 sites are averaging $500 a month (this is where averages really skew things).

    In order to do this, Andrew follows a fairly easy process:

    1. Find high traffic keywords with low competition that is something he can sell – this is a ‘go with the flow’ method where you go where everyone already is searching for something they want, but they can’t find it – and then sell it to them.
    A. Use Wordtracker’s keyword tool and search for “does work” to find things that people say works or other phrases like this
    B. Determine if any of the keyword results are products that you could sell as an affiliate
    C. Use the normal due diligence to vett a keyword and competition.
    2. Write 5-10 pages of original content and then build up to 10-20 pages AND backlink OVER TIME.
    A. The 5-10 pages includes the home page (1), which should have no ads ‘above the fold’, the about page (2) – which should be a sales page as well, and 3 to 8 articles to begin (3-10). They should all contain original content and each page should be backlinked to, not just the home page.
    B. Post one more article a week and backlink to the new article each week until you have 5 to 10 more articles (5 to 10 weeks). This does two things: matches what Google expects as far as backlink growth and site growth AND shows Google that your site is growing and therefore can be trusted.
    Ideas for the about page: use this area to write about things like “how [your product] works” – stuff that isn’t sales keywords, but can grab traffic. You can also write about secondary (cousin) keywords here by saying how your product is like this other product and if you monitor your analytics you might see a desire for one of those other products, which could become another site for you.

    Ideas for Blog Posts

    If you have multiple affiliate vendors then you could make a post for each such as “Top 10 [Products] at Wal-Mart.com” and “Top 10 [Products] at Amazon” and on down the line. For products that overlap, you could compare affiliates and get paid either way, for example, “Compare [Product] at Wal-Mart.com to Amazon – Which is Cheaper, Faster, and Has a better Refund”. Basically what you want to do is mix and match, compare and contrast. Another example is to make categories that Amazon or Wal-Mart aren’t willing to do. For example, the retailer might just have a category for flashlights, but you run a flashlight mini-site so you have posts about LED flash lights, camping lights, pocket lights, and hand-crank lights.

    Oh, I forgot to mention that Andrew’s goal is not to just earn money – he says there are easier ways to make more money. What he’s interested in is the amount of money he can make for the least amount of work because what he is interested in is traveling. Affiliate marketing allows him to travel one week a month so in essence he makes at least $10K a month by only working 3 of those weeks finding good keyword, low competition niches, developing original content, and backlinking it. That’s essentially what I’d like to do both with product marketing and app development. I like the freedom and the work-to-income ratio it has the possiblity to provide.

    I believe that I can do this by pursuing a profession in Internet marketing and app development, which is a field of digital content creation and marketing that I call “niche publishing.”

    Niche publishing has a lifestyle that can free me from the burdens (security) of a 8-5, office job and a traditional ‘boss’. Even self-employed service businesses like computer repair or web design involve bosses – the customer. Although niche publishing has customers, they are much more passive.

    Digital content has the advantage of ‘build it and forget it’, ‘asset building’, and ‘multiple streams of income’, which service industries and typical 8-5 jobs do not provide. Imagine if every report or function you built at your 8-5 job would continue to pay you money over time and the more things you made for your job, the more money you made over time. That’s how Internet marketing and app development can work.

  • Affiliate Marketing in Indianapolis

    I’ve written about my meetup experiences here in the past so those who read my website may know I’m a member of the Indianapolis Affiliate Meetup hosted by Affiliate Summit. In the last meeting, I spoke about how to get started in affiliate marketing, but I was feeling bad because my site about nook covers was not doing so hot. Now part of this because demand in general was down, but part of it was because of duplication of content, Google put me in the sandbox for three months. The good news is I’m out now and the site is performing better, which makes me feel better about being an Indianapolis web designer and Internet marketer.

    This morning I met a lady at the Carmel, Indiana BNI chapter who was interested in creating affiliate marketing relationships with local vendors so I invited her to the Indianapolis Affiliate Summit meeting. She didn’t know about it and was excited to come. The group has a good mix of seasoned affiliate marketers, those learning about it for the first time, and those with other related skill sets like copyrighting, authors, and web designers. There was also interest from a printing company out of Kokomo that has recently opened up an Indianapolis office in Fletcher Park near the old Indianapolis airport.

    The last Affiliate Summit meeting was about how to start an Internet marketing business where I went through the 6 steps to making money online, but I didn’t go into how to find a niche or keyword metrics for success.  The next meeting will be about the Internet tax looming in Indiana and what we can do to stop it. We’re meeting at Buca di Beppo in Castleton and although most meetups don’t require you to buy food, the arrangement we made with the restaurant requires each person to pay $12 for a meal. This is not the norm, but if you’re coming for the first time this month, know what to expect.

    Thanks to Affiliate Summit for the free pass to Affiliate Summit West 2012 in Las Vegas. I can’t wait to learn more about Affiliate Marketing, but in the mean time, I’m watching Affiliate Summit videos with Blake from Blaze Communications in Carmel, Indiana. Blake runs Blaze Communications as a creative marketing firm and BS&T as a business strategy and technology forum in Carmel. The BS&T forum has a sub-group of member who also attend the affiliate marketing group in Indianapolis, which is how I first met Blake. Thanks to Blake for sharing the DVDs he won from Affiliate Summit.

  • How to Start an Internet Marketing Business

    I spoke a little bit about how to start an Internet marketing business on my blog, An Entrepreneurial Mind, but wanted to go into more detail here about how I got started in Internet marketing and what products I’d recommend. I got started in Internet marketing almost by mistake. I was doing some research about how to promote a particular site and kept running across initials like “IM” and “MS” and “30DC.” After looking into them I realized that there was thing called Internet marketing (IM) and a lot of people used Market Samurai (MS) because of going through the Thirty Day Challenge (30DC). I ended up going through what is now called The Challenge (since their was no fee for awesomeness) and got to really like Ed Dale. I eventually bought Market Samurai and have used that extensively for research. One thing I didn’t learn from any one place though was an overall strategy for how to go from start to finish on a project or a business.

    For a long time, I had a card hanging up on my wall that said, “There is a process to success,” which was a quote from Chris Farrell. Chris runs an Internet marketing service that teaches people how to make money online in easy, step-by-step processes from start to finish. What Chris has said, Ed Dale would add, “There’s a process for everything. Creativity is a process. If you’ve ever found yourself sitting in front of the computer wondering what to do next. That’s not a Focus problem…It’s a PROCESS problem.” Learn the processes of successful people and repeat them to be successful yourself. It’s not easy, it’s a process, and one that is learnable. Sir Ken Robinson, an author, speaker, and international advisor on education in the arts to government, non-profits, and education, says that, “Innovation and creativity are learnable skills, not inborn talents.”

    I’ve just recently purchased and received Sir Ken’s newest book, The Element, which tackles the challenge of determining and pursuing work that is aligned with individual talents and passions to achieve well-being and success. ‘The element’ is what Sir Ken identifies as the point where the activities individuals enjoy and are naturally good at, come together. I’m looking forward to reading it, but even more looking forward to doing it. I once had a mentor tell me that my mind was always running on a parallel track to what I was working on during the day because I was aligned with my true passion, but that once I did, I would “take off on fire.” That’s partly why I wrote what I did under my new executive coaching blog, Are You on Fire? If you’re not on fire for what you do, what’s stopping you? If you’re tired of that pit in your stomach every time you think about your work, it’s time to consider a change and if you’re looking for help on how to make money online, remember Chris Farrell’s membership program.

  • How to Survive the Summer Slump

    There’s an old saying, “You can plant a tree any month with an ‘r’ in it,” which means you’ll have the most success during the months with more naturally occurring rainfall. Of course you can plant trees any month of the year (as long as the ground is not frozen), but from May to August you’re going to have to water the trees to keep them alive. The same thing is true for building up an Internet business because if traffic is rain, then it ‘rains’ the least in months without an ‘r’ in them, which may explain why September traditionally sees the most traffic and is the most productive month. The correlation between traffic and productivity is thought to be because people are getting ‘back to work’ and feeling refreshed after the many events and vacations they took over the summer. Taken a step further, the reason for the down-turn in Internet traffic is probably due to those same events and vacations – and generally people are inside less. Yes, people browse the Internet on their phones, but most Internet (non app) purchases are made from a traditional computer browser.

    So what does that mean for Internet marketers?

    The first step is to recognise what is happening. You can’t and won’t change human behavior, but you can do two things to help keep your business from experiencing a summer slump:

    1. Build during the down time.
    2. Build for the down time.

    Build during the summer for fall, winter, and spring sales

    If most to all of your traffic is organic, you’re going to want to build and backlink before you expect the most sales. It doesn’t make sense to build and launch a new web site or product for Christmas in December. There is just not enough time to become a market leader. However, if you had built for Christmas during the summer, you would be poised for success come December.

    Build web sites or products specifically for the summer down times

    You may have heard of the Internet marketing term, “evergreen markets”, which means markets that are always in season. Commodities like food and energy are good examples, but evergreen markets are susceptible to downturns in overall traffic, so building a ‘summer niche’ during the winter months is recommended for riding out the summer slump. Some ideas include travel, outdoor sporting equipment, camping gear, or clothing.

  • Google Authorship Markup Verification

    Trey Smith sent out an email stating how, “Google just dropped a BOMBSHELL foreshadowing the biggest change to getting your page listed in a decent position.”

    Google’s newest thing is that they don’t want the web to be anonymous anymore. This is all part of Google profiles and Google plus being public. The new thing is to add a snippet if code to your theme that ties your site back to your Google profile and then your headshot appears to the right of your Google listing. The theory goes that anonymous sites will go down in rankings and Google profile sites will go up. Never before has your personal brand been so important.

    According to Ryan T. Malone, the first of these tags is the rel=”author” tag. This tag is used only on a link to your “about” page on your blog. What this tag does is quite simple – it tells Google that this page is a page that is dedicated to the author, and is the most important page on your blog or website relating to the author. Quite simple, right?

    The second of these tags is the rel=”me” tag. This tag should only ever be placed on your author page, and should only ever link to either a Google+ profile, or a standard Google profile. What this does is quite simple – it tells Google that the page that you are linking to is in fact the profile of the author. This is exactly where Google will pull its profile image from.

    The code to use in your functions.php file to enable to use of relationship tags in posts is as follows:

    function yoast_allow_rel() {
    global $allowedtags;
    $allowedtags['a']['rel'] = array ();
    }
    add_action( 'wp_loaded', 'yoast_allow_rel' );

    This post was heavily influenced by information given by Joost De Valk on his blog – I give credit where it is due, and as an avid reader of his blog, I recommend his work to anyone who reads this blog. His original post on this topic can be found here.

  • Internet Marketing Major Players

    Here are my Internet Marketing heroes:

    • Ed Dale – Australian; started 30 day challenge; convinced Dan Raine to cash out all of his websites for millions
    • Dan Raine – British; runs Immediate Edge with help from Ed Dale; male yeast infection guy
    • Trey Smith – American; Internet marketer who recently started iOS app training business; friends with Ed Dale
    • Matt Carter – the other Australian; not associated with Ed Dale; runs most popular Internet marketing blog; the beta fish guy
    • Carey Bergeron – American; friends with Matt Carter; makes money from Adsense; runs Adsense Guild
    • Ryan Lee – American; known for being a millionaire Internet marketer; starts out promoting other products, then makes his own versions to sell
    • Greg Jacobs – Mage Monster, millionaire
    • Mark Ling – known for Traffic Travis
    • Andrew Hansen – online entrepreneur originally from Queensland, Australia – now living in London, known for his Affiliate Mini Site Strategy
    • Frank Kern – started out creating information products for pets (mostly dogs) and now trains Internet Marketers

    By the way, I just finished reading The Greatest Salesman in the World by Og Mandingo. It’s pretty good.

  • Introducing a Brand New Way to Market Your Business

    Grow Your Business Organically

    A lot of SEO companies market how they will promote your business online using Internet marketing and online advertising techniques, but Erich Stauffer noticed a gap between where promotion stops and business begins and so we used social media management to not just promote your business, but grow your business.

    Digital Marketing Strategy

    We’ll work with you to create a comprehensive strategy to marry your business brand, vision, values, products, and services with traditional outdoor, radio, TV, and yellow page advertising alongside social networking and social spaces like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and other technologies like apps for the iPhone and Android phones.

    SEO is Not Enough – Content Marketing

    It’s no longer enough to have a top-ranking website in Google if your web site is not converting traffic, your story is not consistent, and you are not creating lasting relationships with customers. Erich Stauffer can help you to do all three with content marketing.

    Social Media Management

    We are excited to offer social media management to help your business organize and streamline their marketing efforts with a consistent message that is in-line with their mission, vision, and values. We believe so strongly about this product that we would be happy to take you out to lunch to show you how it works in a one-on-one session. Are you interested in learning more?

  • Geek Hand and The Settler’s League

    Hate the Game, Not the Player

    I set out to create a new “Home” brand of technology consulting so that I could offer Indianapolis computer repair in homes without damaging the brand I was establishing with business customers.  I came up with “Professional Technology Consulting at Home,” but the domain was taken so I started looking around and trying different keywords.  I found that “codageek.com – The last geek you’ll ever need,” was available, but I kept looking.  I eventually stumbled upon “geekhand.com” after looking up synonyms for ‘friendly’ (handy).

    I liked “Geek Hand” enough to consider grabbing it, but I wanted to do a little bit of research on the name and domain first.  I found that it had been used prior by another person for personal use and had since been abandoned.  I liked that there were already a lot of backlinks to it from other sites, but because much of the links were from sites about gaming, I wondered if it was the right fit for my in-home computer repair business product I was developing for Indianapolis business consulting firm, Watershawl, Inc., where I was CEO.  It seemed like it might be better off as a part of my blog network at Cost Publishing Media Group as a board game micro-site.

    I went ahead and picked up the domain, setup WordPress, the theme, the plugins, and the SEO.  I created a logo for it which consisted of a 0 and 1 which has both game and binary code meanings.  I used this logo as a background on Twitter and as it’s icon.  By the way, I don’t hardly purchase domains unless the username is also available on Twitter.  In this case, both were available and I took that as a sign before purchasing the domain.  While all of this setup is going on I’m thinking about content and products to sell or promote.  I did a quick search on Amazon and determine that board games, video games, and card games would be my primary products with the “news” of the site being centered around the geek culture of movies, television, and conventions like Comic-Con.

    To promote the site automatically I did two things: I setup a Tumblr account to pull in WordPress posts automatically push tweets out to Twitter and a Facebook page to push out to Twitter anything I post there.  So I only really have to post in WordPress, then copy the link to the post to Facebook to post on what is now the ‘Settler’s League’ page there in order to have coverage to Tumblr, Facebook, and Twitter all at once.  Sometimes I’ll bounce those around on my Facebook wall and on other Twitter accounts I manage for different brands.

    The next step was to add content and put the promotional procedure into place, which I did.  I had a minor problem with links overflowing in the footer, but a quick CSS tweak fixed that.  I have a WordPress theme that I use as a base for most of my Cost Pub sites.  I also make custom WordPress themes and do web design and SEO for the Indianapolis area using Watershawl’s Growmotion marketing where we Growmote web sites–first we build them then we promote them; don’t just promote your business, grow your business with Growmotion.

    Update: I have since converted Geek Hand into more of it’s original role of personal computer repair, but with a slant towards mobile phones – a play on the ‘hand’ in the title.  Here’s the link to the new Geek Hand Facebook page in case you’re interested and a link to Settler’s League’s home page.