Content Marketing Strategy: Create Your 5-Part Content Plan
A content marketing plan will grow your audience, build trust, and convert browsers into buyers. Let's take a look at the content you need.
Internet Marketing tips and advice from Chris Garrett
Better Blog Branding: Crafting Your Positioning Statement
With a Brand Positioning Statement, Bloggers and businesses of all sizes can stand out and get noticed. Craft your uniqueness messaging now!
Naming Your Blog: How to Create Catchy Blog Names
Naming your blog is important for blog branding, or blog success for that matter. Tips for catchy blog names, creating the best blog name.
Better Blog Branding: 10 Ways To Destroy Your Brand
It is a lot easier to damage a brand than it is to build one. You can grow a brand over time but the same brand can be destroyed overnight.
Where Should Your Blog Live? Integrated, Subdirectory, Domain or Subdomain?
Should your blog be the same website as your business pages? Maybe put your articles in a folder? Should you blog on a subdomain?
Using Flagship Content to Make Evergreen Sales
Content marketing is now an established and expected part of any online marketing strategy, but how do you use it to generate sales? Can you use content to make sales long-term?
What is Authority?
Authority Bloggers seek out ways to increase their authority in their niche and in the eyes of Google, but what is authority anyway?
Linkbait, Flagship Content, and Authority
Are Linkbait posts also Cornerstone Content? How do you separate "Authority Content" from "Bookmarkable Content"? What is the difference between "Pillar Content" and "Flagship Content"?
How to Grow Your Google Authority
Google Authority is the best route to better rankings in Google, over the long term. That is great, but how do you achieve it?
Pen Portraits in Marketing: How To Create Customer Profiles and Understand Your Target Audience
Pen portraits are a marketing technique for defining an audience that I believe everyone should get into the habit of making.
Overcoming Sales Objections the Easy Way
Overcoming sales objections is an essential part of the sales process, but it seems a topic that people I speak to either neglect or are fearful of.
It can be straightforward to counter customer objections, but before we get into that, I should describe what I mean by objections and what I mean by overcoming them.
Is Email Marketing Dead (No, But Yours Might Be)
Is email dead or just YOUR email?
Website Copywriting: Benefits vs Features?
Should you focus on features or benefits on your sales pages? Which is more persuasive?
10 Reasons Your Outreach Sucks (and How to Fix it)
How to do blog/website outreach properly and build relationships rather than burn them.
Where Advertising Fits with Content Marketing
There is a dangerous myth that you should do content marketing instead of advertising, or with content marketing you don't need to pay for traffic.
How to Choose a Blog Niche and Your New Branded Domain
We often talk about finding a niche for your project - to avoid going too wide trying to appeal to everyone, and not appealing to anybody. But when choosing a blog niche, how niche is too niche?
3 Most Dangerous Social Media Influencer Myths
Social Media, and in particular the "social media influencer" phenomenon has generated many myths, lies, and half-truths. Let's set them straight.
Don’t Buy Into the Email Marketing Hype
Email marketing is amazing, don’t think for a second that I am bashing email. My frustration is around people drawing incorrect conclusions, then passing along those “learnings” as advice. Read on and I will explain.
Why prospects believe you are expensive and what to do about it
When people question our prices, dismiss our products and services as expensive, or call us a rip-off, it hurts. “They don’t understand!”, we say. But it is OUR job to help them understand. What can you do?
Authority Websites Need to Show AND Tell
It’s not enough just to have a website, or even to have an attractive website full of useful content. To succeed as the go-to person in your niche, you need to communicate your authority with your website. You need to communicate your authority through your design, your layout, and your content.
Why New Products Fail
What is the difference between new products that take off in popularity and those that essentially get ignored? How do you know when your new product is ready to sell? Today I would like to share with you the key strategy that will allow you to not only sell more of your products and services …
Why Even a Big List Won’t Save You from Bad Strategy
A big question I get asked all the time here and on Copyblogger webinars (right after how to generate traffic or build a list), is “How can I get more people to respond/buy/subscribe?” In my previous post, I talked about what makes content truly successful, and I gave a big answer, but for this particular …
The Secret Element of Successful Marketing Campaigns
Why could Brian Clark send one email from his email list and make 6 figures? Is it list size? Yes, scale obviously comes into it, but if someone else had his list they wouldn’t necessarily get the same result. So what is the crucial factor that makes the difference? Is it Authority? Yes, of course, that’s …
The Simple Route to Generating Sales Leads with Your Business Website
One thing all businesses have in common, large or small, is they all have to generate sales leads. If you are not generating sales, well, you are not in business! A lot of my customers come to me because they have had so much referral business over the years they have never really developed a …
How to Improve Your Website Trust Factor
Is your website harming the trust and credibility of your business? Are people worried or put off when they visit you online? Could your site be working against you rather than working as a business asset? I’m sad to say that this is more common than we would like. It was certainly the case with …
What to Say When Nobody Cares What You Do
It’s a simple but uncomfortable truth. Nobody cares what you do. Oh, people might ask. At a networking lunch, a cocktail party, and so on. But nobody cares. What do people actually care about? “Enough about me. What do you think about me?” It’s funny because it is true. People want to hear if listening …
The Real ROI of Engagement
We are bombarded by “feel good” social media advice. Join the conversation. Engage. Listen. But this stuff takes time and effort. Where is the return on investment? It’s not just about chatting, and the ROI is not found by simply throwing up a Facebook page. If you are struggling to convince your boss (or yourself) …
How to Attract Clients and Fill Your Coaching Practice Using Blogging and Content Marketing
Today I want to give you some ideas for how you can attract clients and fill your coaching practice using blogging and content marketing. If you would like some background on why I believe coaching is a fantastic service to offer in your business, check out the previous article. First Big Mistake Before we get …
How to Build a Coaching Practice with a Blog
Todd wanted want to know how I have always had a steady flow of coaching clients going back to when I started my business, despite not always having a big list, not always having traffic, and all my shyness/introversion psychological limitations! If you are a coach who struggles with sales and marketing then this article is …
Build Your Affiliate List and Break into the JV Club
On a coaching call the other day my client asked how to break into the JV (“Joint Venture”) club and I realised it was something I wondered myself years ago. You see there is a real challenge facing anyone who hasn’t got any joint venture partners, affiliates, or is even struggling to get people to …
Work on Your Branding
One of the things I work on with my mentoring and consulting clients is their “Brand”. Having that outside viewpoint and guidance can help them get to a stronger point than trying to struggle alone. It is difficult to be objective about ourselves. What, though is a strong brand? How do we create one? Do …
5 Reasons to Love Webinars Explained
Webinars rock, but it seems my “webinars rock” illustration caused more confusion than it educated! To rectify the situation, I have cut up and explained my thinking in this article. 1. Awareness and Ideas The first reason to love webinars is that you get the opportunity to create a sense of event around your ideas, …
The Ugly Truth about Product Launches
One of the frustrating myths about internet marketing is that it is easy, takes no work, and can turn the web into your “personal ATM machine dispensing cash on demand”. There is another myth though that comes up every so often that is related, but subtly different, and so attractive that people really really want …
Conversion Blogging: What is Your Website’s Clear Purpose?
After attracting an audience, a great deal of website owners are struggling with the "C" in the ARC sequence - sales conversions.
How to Really Use Social Media Marketing as a Tool For Business
Social Media Marketing is a compelling tool for business because of the dual benefits of This is drawing in more and more businesses who want to extract these benefits and learn the best practices. Unfortunately we are also seeing an influx of the less open and authentic business types who only want to extract money …
Are You Ready for Social Media?
The online marketing world moves in waves, with the majority of businesses following a trend not because it is fashionable but out of commercial necessity.
Going online, just to be online.
SEO was king for many years.
Then it was Adwords.
Blogging came next.
Now it is Social Media that is gaining all the attention.
In the past competitiveness and innovation played the largest part, but …
How to Grow Both Twitter Followers and Your Blog Subscribers
Check your Twitter Follower Count and compare it against your Blog Subscriber Count. Which is the bigger number? Which of those counts is growing faster?
I asked my Twitter followers this question, and overwhelmingly the answer came back that you have more Twitter followers or Twitter is catching up fast and likely to overtake.
The folks who have far fewer Twitter followers than blog subscribers …
Aweber Popup Email Subscription Form Test Results
For just over a week now I have been testing the Aweber “lightbox” popup email subscription form. I wrote about the experiment here, and now I wanted to share some results. As you can see when I placed the form up I actually got a small dip in subscriptions before it corrected to become an …
Email Marketing Tips: What to Write About
The most common question I have been sent lately about this series has been
I know I need a list but what do I send? What should I write about? How can I get people to buy?
An email list is just a delivery mechanism. What you send to people is up to you. That is both a liberating and scary thing, because it is a blank canvas, but a very public one.
Put yourself in the role of the subscriber. …
Email Marketing Tips: Writing Effective Email Subject Lines
In the last article of this Email Marketing tutorial series we looked at email copywriting and the goal of each element of your emails. We also looked at the importance of your subject lines in getting your emails opened. Let's look at this aspect in detail.
As previously discussed, your email subject line has one main priority; get the recipient to open the email.
A Word of Warning
First of …