plusLINK Blog

Internet Marketing for Smart People

Posted on 13. Oct, 2009 by SexySexyJenny in E-Marketing

There’s no del­i­cate way to put this. If you’re a reg­u­lar Copy­blog­ger reader, you’re just … well … smarter than most peo­ple look­ing to mar­ket online.

You’re not inter­ested in lame “get rich quick” schemes. You’re not try­ing to build a busi­ness with no work, no time, and no sense. You’re not chas­ing after that mag­i­cal sil­ver bul­let that will solve all your problems.

Mainly, you’d just like some solid, smart advice on online busi­ness that actu­ally works.

In other words, you don’t have to be an Ein­stein to “get” this stuff. But you’d have to be an idiot to believe some of the stuff ped­dled by tra­di­tional Inter­net mar­ket­ing “gurus” (many of whom have never done what they’re “teach­ing” before).

Copy­blog­ger has been deliv­er­ing solid, smart advice for nearly four years now, and start­ing this week, we’d like to take it up a notch.

Oh, and one more thing: we’ll be doing that for free.

Intro­duc­ing Inter­net Mar­ket­ing for Smart Peo­ple
Brian and I have been kick­ing around the idea of a focused email newslet­ter for months, but we wanted to make sure we put some­thing together that reflected the high stan­dards we always try to set for the site.

We wanted to cre­ate a sys­tem­atic, sim­ple way that you could get a good grasp of the power of effec­tive online marketing.

We wanted you to have an easy-to-navigate tuto­r­ial on the “Copy­blog­ger method” of cre­at­ing and mar­ket­ing a prof­itable online business.

And we wanted a way to make sure that you got a chance to see all of the “best of the best” that’s appeared on Copy­blog­ger over the years.

The four pil­lars of online mar­ket­ing suc­cess
Think­ing through what this would look like, we found four themes that kept com­ing up.

So we cre­ated an intro­duc­tion to the newslet­ter that works through these four themes, sys­tem­at­i­cally intro­duc­ing you to the most impor­tant con­cepts we think every online mar­keter must know about. It’s like a course in Inter­net mar­ket­ing that pre­pares you for the more in-depth newslet­ter con­tent that fol­lows (still all free).

These are the cor­ner­stones of how to build a busi­ness with the Copy­blog­ger model, using every­thing we’ve learned over the years. 

Ready?

Pil­lar 1: Rela­tion­ships
Cre­at­ing strong rela­tion­ships with an audi­ence is crit­i­cal to every­thing we do here. Rather than con­stantly hunt­ing down new cus­tomers, we’d much rather cre­ate a val­ued envi­ron­ment that ben­e­fits our exist­ing read­ers and cus­tomers and keeps pulling them back. We don’t adver­tise in the tra­di­tional sense; instead, our read­ers do a great job of “spread­ing the word” for us.

It’s about hav­ing con­sum­mate respect, always, for your audi­ence and your market.

It’s about focus­ing almost obses­sively on their needs, over and above your own (and get­ting what you want, almost mag­i­cally, in the process).

It’s about mak­ing a com­mit­ment to cre­at­ing a qual­ity expe­ri­ence for your read­ers and subscribers.

Pil­lar 2: Direct response copy­writ­ing
We cer­tainly stay abreast of the lat­est social media trends (and some­times cre­ate them), but under­ly­ing every­thing we do here is solid copy­writ­ing techniques.

Start­ing with a killer head­line and mov­ing strate­gi­cally through the copy to a stir­ring call to action, tra­di­tional copy­writ­ing tech­nique works amaz­ingly well in social media.

“Old-fashioned” copy­writ­ing advice can make all the dif­fer­ence between a busi­ness or blog that limps along and one that truly thrives.

We’ll show you pre­cisely what we mean in the ini­tial issues of the newsletter.

Pil­lar 3: Con­tent mar­ket­ing
What’s the back­bone of the Copy­blog­ger formula?

Deliver great con­tent. Deliver more great con­tent. Deliver still more great content.

Keep doing that in a strate­gic and focused way.

Every once in awhile, make a great offer that ben­e­fits the reader and involves the exchange of cash money.

Of course, we’ll give you some more specifics on how to do that once you’re on board. 

Pil­lar 4: Have some­thing worth sell­ing
Every­one is sell­ing some­thing. It might be a ser­vice, a prod­uct, a down­load, or sim­ply an idea.

What­ever you’re sell­ing, it’s got to be worth the price. (And never for­get that reader atten­tion is a valu­able com­mod­ity that’s in strictly lim­ited supply.)

Whether you’re ask­ing for dol­lars, euros, yen, or valu­able time and atten­tion, you’ve got to deliver some­thing that tow­ers above your ask­ing price.

Bring­ing it all together
Each of these four pil­lars enhances the oth­ers. Together, they’re much stronger than they would be if any of the pil­lars were missing.

Inter­net Mar­ket­ing for Smart Peo­ple is a free course and con­tin­ual newslet­ter that’s deliv­ered via email. Each week you’ll get a new les­son on one of the four pillars.

You’ll get lots of point­ers to archived Copy­blog­ger con­tent, but with a new frame that will help you “con­nect the dots” and start putting this advice to work in your own busi­ness, web site, or blog. It’s much like the approach Brian took with Author­ity Rules, but ongo­ing and ever-evolving as the Inter­net mar­ket­ing space does (which is fast).

To make it work even bet­ter, we’ll also be includ­ing “behind the scenes” lessons that show you how we put our own mar­ket­ing sys­tems and launches together, and the role each piece plays.

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