John Newtson Rambles

I’m heading out in the morning to Grand Rapids, Michigan to a private brain-storming session with a very (very) select group of online marketers and some of the top experts in online lead-generation.

So I’ll be behind closed doors and largely out of touch for a few days.

Cheers,

John

That’s right, check it out over at Explosive Direct Marketing.

Plus, I’ve posted some interesting competitive research for any one marketing in the financial or investing field. It’s a look at the product ladders of two financial publishers with more on the way (I’m going to run through all of the major players in that market).

1. Click here to see the front-end products and back-end products for InvestorPlace.
2. Click here to see the front-end products and back-end products for Stansberry Research.

Enjoy,

John

If you’re not marketing through multiple sales-channels, you’re going to want to see this.

Retail Systems Research recently did a study of multi-channel marketers and how they fare in the marketplace. Surpise, surprise — they’re kicking butt.

60% of the fastest-growing retail marketers are using three sales channels.

While, many businesses — especially smaller business primarily online — ignore offline sales-channels entirely, their customers ARE buying in multiple channels.

As a big believer in both multi-channel and customer-centric marketing I find it a little funny how businesses become totally committed to a single sales channel — like email marketing.

The truth is, your customers are already buying through multiple channels. You should give them the opportunity to buy your stuff through different mediums.

Plus, customers who buy from you through more than one sales channel, are more profitable.

The study confirmed what we direct response marketing fanatics are always preaching — customers you can get to buy from you through multiple formats are ’significantly more profitable.’

So what channels are you using? If you want to see how to develop a multi-channel strategy follow this link: Sales-channels.

- John

Map of Glam Media

I love Glam Media.

And so do over 77 million women, about the number of visitors who showed up on their network in May of 2008. That’s an enormous amount of traffic.

Now, I’m not particularly interested in the specifics of their content, what I’m enamoured with is their network architecture. It’s beautiful. And hugely profitable.

Click here to get a see their network map and you’ll get a glimpse into why they’re so successful.

Take a close look and you’ll see this business model has broad implications for the web. While the web continues to fracture into niche after niche after niche this distributed media is replacing the old massive single-site media properties.

What excites me is the implication for smaller publishers. There are already a ton of blog networks out there but the combination of major publishing platforms with blog networks is tre’ exciting.

John

Do you know what a Google Fridge is?

Basically it’s Google saying “You da man!” because you’ve generated 1,000,0000 leads through Google Adwords. Pretty nifty if you get one.

Well, here’s a guy who has enough Google Fridge’s to open up his own appliance store.

He’s driven over 27 million leads through pay-per-click in the last 2 years.

His client’s ads have shown up over 8 BILLION times (convert that to dollars and that’s like a whole week of Pentagon spending!)

And he and his partner have sold more than $27 million through their pay-per-click campaigns. And that doesn’t take into account backend sales (where the big money is).

If you want qualified leads then this is the man you want to meet. more »

Who the heck is Dick Benson and why should you study the crap out of him?

Hey, great question.

Dick Benson is one of those giants of direct marketing most online marketers have never heard of. more »

Michael Masterson of Early to Rise told the story about how making over-the-top, unrestrained claims in copy built a $5 million business in two years, and killed it in five.

Why? Because of the difference between buyers and quality customers.

more »

Here’s a great way to be a jackass online in three easy steps.

Register on forums and blogs under a pseudonym.

Participate in the conversation for say 20-30 posts. Make sure you give good advice so people start to trust you.

Then start schilling your own products as if you were an honest third-party.

Basically, build trust with people so you can exploit it.

That little tid-bit is actually being passed around internet marketing circles these days.

Klassy.

The sad part is I’ve heard, otherwise intelligent marketers, exclaim this is a cool technique. Instead of the stupid, unethical garbage that it is.

It’s stupid because it’s a terribly weak way to market in the conversation-oriented environment of today’s Internet.

I hate to be overly simplistic BUT why not just get a good product into the hands of talkers and ask them to talk about it instead? Just a crazy idea.

It shouldn’t have to be said but apparently it needs to be said: more »

I was talking to Pat Corpora the other day (he was president of Rodale Books for 15 years, head of AOL’s direct marketing for 3 and president of HCI Direct for 4-5 more) and he said something REALLY interesting about the long-standing long vs. short copy debate. more »