Getting Started with Internet Marketing: Truth or Dare

Truth: Some stranger on the web wants to sell you an SEO package over the web for thousands of dollars. He's promised that you'll make millions while sitting in your underwear working two hours per week. Do you buy it? Truth?

Dare: Start a web site without any real SEO knowledge and see where it goes. Listen to the folks who say, "just toss together an information product, create an adWords account and throw it up." Do you dare?

The quick sales letter site you throw up without any real education will probably appear like the other kind throw up. So you're caught in a catch-22. You don't trust the promises of the internet marketer who wants to sell you something. He is an internet marketer after all. But you also don't have the knowledge to do it yourself. So what do you do? Truth or Dare?

You can buy some books from the old marketing pros that swear everything they've done for 30 years applies to the Internet just the same. You can create the same classified ad in adWords and it'll work just as well for you today as it worked for that guy fives year ago. Truth? Not exactly.

The Internet is a river. It's a man made river that flows through our cities, sort of like the Los Angeles River. Except in this case it keeps growing wider and wider, with more and more water (information) flowing through it every second. I won't even mention that in some cases it's more like a sewer... That's what NetNanny is for.

There were fish in the Internet River when it was created by Al Gore in the 1992 (I'm referring to http and web browsing, yes I know the Internet itself was created much earlier... but Al Gore probably did that also), and there are still fish populating its waters right now.

In fact, the population grows and grows as the river widens. But something else happens to those fish. Natural selection comes along and they get wiser to the fishermen standing on the concrete walls of this river. These fish, comprised of you and I and all of your prospective customers, are hungry and will bite the right bait. These fish also school together on MySpace and have learned to trust in the Lord their God, named Google for the answers to their inspiration.

They've also learned that their God Google does not always speak the truth. Sometimes it speaks in riddles. And sometimes the evil doers capture the mouth of God of speak blasphemy with a sweet tongue. What is a fish to do in the vast rapid flow of the Internet River? More importantly, how can you become a better fisherman or fisherwoman?

Personally, I would suggest you make it easy on yourself and just hire a professional. But not just any professional. Obviously you should hire me. But if you want to hire someone else, get some sort of rock-solid guarantee on performance. Work out a royalty-based fee structure to make it worthwhile for both of you.

If you're intent on doing it youself, I'll warn you now... this is not something you can do in a short time. Sure, you can get lucky and hit the right niche and the get the right school of fish swarming you accidentally, but it's very rare and usually falls apart almost instantly. You probably can do it in your underwear, if you must. But don't tell us about it.

Look, I'll tell you the truth. I was born a computer geek. I was writing software on a computer that practically ran on a hampster wheel, ok? It's true. I hate to say it, but it's true. Well then I had this miraculous transformation into a manager and executive. I was a real business person, right? Well, sure. I owned a company. I was El Presidente and we did well most times. We even survived the huge technology decline in the early 2000s, though it nearly ate us for brunch.

But I was missing something. I could build a web site that controls billions of dollars in assets, used by hundreds of people, but I had no clue how to market an Internet site. I fell into the same trap most highly technical people do... I was too concerned about our products and our skills and not concerned enough about marketing. Forget lions, marketing is the real king of the jungle.

A good software or web developer can do anything you can think of. The real question is what shuold you be doing. The answers to those distinct quetions are virtually never the same. So I went on a little mission to learn everything I could about marketing and what I should be doing with technology, and boy was it a hard lesson. I learned that I didn't know one percent of what I thought I did.

So I'd stress that professional help will enable you to avoid very costly mistakes and save a lot of time. But, if your heels are really dug in to the concept of doing it all yourself as I've always been, I'll give you a few tips.

First get some marketing books (go to the library if don't want to buy them), and actually read them. This will give you a good baseline of knowledge. Read some of Dan Kennedy's stuff. Check out Motivational Marketing by Robert Imbriale. There are tons more that are good. Brad Callen has a good free e-book on Google adWords (Pay Per Click). Remember that things change after books are printed, so this is only the first step.

Here's what I have to say about the training and coaching programs. There are some great ones. Most of them are far from great. If you're a total beginner and can't pick up a book, then they might help. But most that I've been through were so basic I was pulling my hair out. They dug into the details of something I would consider simple and glossed over the part that's really complicated.

For example, spend hours telling me how to set up an adwords account, but then tell me to just "use other people's email lists" instead of building my own. Sure, they'll probably just give me the password if I ask, right?

If you can find a good coaching/mentoring program, then by all means go for it. But do beware that many will make it sound like an interactive course, when really it's just some books and recordings. There may be live teleconference calls, but you'll be muted the whole time.

Then you have some that do allow interactive teleconference calls. Well if the program has 100+ people dialed in, you'd much prefer they be muted. You don't want to listen to everyone else's stupid questions. So make sure to find out what the limit is on the class before you sign up and how interactive it really is.

So pick up some books to get a primer before you invest in some major program. Get an SEO book to give you the basics about keywords and tags. Pretty much any one will do because none will help that much. Next is the hard part. I'd suggest you start out selling affiliate products, but if you want to venture into your own, the product development part is all you.

The biggest thing I can tell you is be prepared to write. Be prepared to write a lot of stuff, because it's going to take a lot of words to make the whole thing work. Unless you have five hundred friends who all run high-traffic web sites, that is. Then I suggest you buy 500 cases of beer and let them do all the work. Just don't buy them cheap beer.

Seriously, do a lot of quality writing and get it posted all over the Internet. That's the most important thing. Be prepared for a long haul. If you're half as impatient as I am, you'll be going nuts in a couple of months.

The other big thing may seem obvious, but I'll say it anyway. Cherish the customers you do get and always treat them well. There's really nothing more important than that. Keep in communication with them and get to know as much about them as possible. If they buy from you once and you do a good job, they'll be much easier to sell to than a stranger.

Always give a guarantee and always honor that guarantee to the letter. Really go out of your way for your customers, no matter how large you grow. Give early customers special deals for their testimonials, even if you have to give away lots of stuff for free. Free stuff is how you build that email and customer list.

I could go on but I have to feed the fish in the Internet River. Good luck out there. Don't let the big one get away.

Jeff is the Executive Director of Mims Innovations, who specializes in helping small and medium-sized business achieve outstanding results through building and monetizing Internet presence. Jeff is a former IT-industry CEO and business consultant. He is the author of several books and works in the fitness industry as a fitness coach and martial arts instructor. To learn more about Mims Innovations visit www.mimsin.com. For more information about Jeff go to www.jeffmims.com