I am currently in the middle of a very adventurous stage of parenthood. I along with my wife Arlene are teaching our daughter, Victoria, how to drive.
It turns out that BSM driving schools in London has determined that students typically require 40+ hours of behind-the-wheel experience prior to their driving test. In Hong Kong, 30 hours are recommended, and the most driving schools in New York City recommend the same amount of time. I think these driving school folks are very optimistic.
After about 30 hours behind the wheel, Victoria is just beginning to relax a little. At first, she had an alarming habit of focusing on the road and forgetting about other fairly important details, such as speedometer readings. She would be a little late tending to the brakes, and she typically fumbled around when looking for controls.
Victoria is now to the point where she attends to the basic things without even thinking. Accelerating, braking and even turns are becoming smoother, and she can now begin to attend to other details – like the speedometer.
She is not, however, quite ready for her driving test yet, much less the Trans-Canada Highway.
In my calmer moments, it strikes me that there are a lot of similarities between learning to drive and learning the basics of online marketing.
New marketers tend to concentrate on important things like their webpages, but forget about equally important internet marketing fundamentals like subscriber lists. They also can be a bit late tending to their backlinks, and fumble around some when looking for the right anchor text.
Internet Marketing Fundamentals for Every Marketer
1. List Development
How many times have you heard it? The money’s in the list. You’ll probably hear it a few more times if you stay in internet marketing.
If your list is your third priority, or fourth priority, or somewhere in your inbox, you should be taking that task a lot more seriously. Tending to your list will make the difference between a few nice looking pages and a few profitable ones.
If you don’t have a solid list-building strategy yet, maybe you just need the right kind of help. Hiring a marketer may seem like an extravagance, but if he comes up with a compelling optin offer, you’ll see plenty of return from that investment.
You may also want to consider purchasing some of the better email marketing tools, such as
A.Weber’s software, to help you “get the word out”.
2. Produce Pages that Produce Action
After a decade or more of teaching online marketing, I have observed several common mistakes, and the most common one is producing a huge volume of pages without a purpose. When designing the page, ask yourself what you want the visitor to do while on that page;
- click on a link?
- add a product to the shopping cart?
- leave a comment?
- listen to a podcast?
You should determine the specific purpose of that page, then craft it accordingly. Write a good article with lots of visual breaks, sub-headlines, lists and a very clear call to action.
Most importantly; don’t clutter up the page – your visitors need to find the link in order to click on it, right? Driving traffic to your site is easier when the road is clear!
3. Website Analytics; aka Measuring, Tracking and Much Testing
Just as often as you are told to develop your lists, you should have heard about the need to measure, track and test the effectiveness of your pages. The connection between the two tasks is obvious; an ineffective webpage won’t help you develop your lists, or do anything else, for that matter.
Polishing the perfect webpage is much more fun than crunching numbers to discern if the perfect webpage is actually effective. That’s why many people neglect this particular task. With the right free tools, though, the measuring, tracking and testing are much easier to do.
My two favorite free tools are Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer. With these in place, you’ll be able to separate what works from what doesn’t, and you can make important changes to your site sooner, rather than later.
Sticking to the Basics
An interesting trend affecting driving schools in Manchester, Turin, and Nagasaki is the rise of “refresher” courses. These courses are intended to re-acquaint people with the basic driving principles they learned as teenagers or young adults.
Perhaps this wisdom could apply to internet marketers, as well.
Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in a hundred details and forget where you were going to begin with. We want to focus on the latest Google update or the sexiest new software, and we tend to forget about the basics. The fact is, though, we ignore the basic internet marketing fundamentals at our own peril. Maybe marketers need refresher courses, too.
Tell me what you think!
About the Author
Affiliate marketing trainer, speaker and podcaster James Martell has written several books, including “Online Success for NON-TECHIES” and “Affiliate Marketers Handbook”. James has been sharing his strategies with others through podcasts, online bootcamps, books and articles since 2001. James’ internet-based career allows him plenty of time for fun, family and driving lessons.
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Twitter: monadvexp
says:
What a great analogy, driving lessons and internet marketing. It is, of course, illegal to drive alone before you pass the test and you have to have someone sitting next to you, correcting your errors.
The successful internet marketers seem to work in a similar way. They have a mentor who they discuss things with whilst making their mistakes. IM is probably more complicated than driving so maybe a law should be put in place and a test required.
Trevor Barrett recently posted..Financial Independence Is Not About Making Lots Of Money
Twitter: JamesMartell
says:
Hi Trevor, thanks.
And a test for Internet marketers? Good idea as long as it’s not administered by the government. I personally had a mentor who assisted me when I got started back in 1999. He saved me a bundle of time and a world of hurt.
I have been full-time ever since.
James
One of the tools that helps most online marketers is a to-do list that helps you get things done. However, in order to get the most out of a to-do list, you need to get things done consistently. You have shared a wonderful thoughts. Thanks you for this.
Terry Wedlock recently posted..Social Media and The Riots
Twitter: JamesMartell
says:
Hi Terry, I am glad you enjoyed the article. My wife Arlene is the master of the “to-do” list. She should do a course on the topic.
James
I totally agree. Before I started keeping a top do list (very recently), I used to waste so mcuh time and at the end of the day, I couldn’t even do half of what I need to do.
But, since keeping a to do list, it becomes easy and enjoyable. I check them off one by one and I can say now, that I get most of what needs to be done, done!
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Great article. The comparison made is very relevant indeed! I completely agree with you regarding “building of your list” being the first marketing strategy. I think one of best ways is to have promotions on websites with sign-up forms. That is one strategy that always works. Thank you for sharing.
Great advice James. I’d like to point out that with the proper testing and metrics in place a failure can be a good thing. If you can learn from the mistakes you make you are one step closer to the answer. Very rarely do we hit a homerun our first time at bat.
Twitter: JamesMartell
says:
Hey Austin, agreed. I was chatting with the owner of CentralPark.com today during a coaching session. The area we are focused on now is getting Google Website Optimizer set-up so we can establish some benchmarks so we can tweak and improve conversions.
In my experience it’s always something that should be first and forefront for serious marketers. Otherwise we’re shooting in the dark.
James
Hi James – having been through teaching our daughter to drive very recently, we, of course, practised LOTS, but then put her through about 4 or so lessons before she actually took her test. The driving school could reinforce what she was going to be facing in her test, information that we were slightly out of date on:-) Also, a helpful “local” tip about signing up for the driving test – book her test for Langley (not Surrey).
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Twitter: JamesMartell
says:
Hi Jacquie, it’s sounds like I am heading down your same path. The next step for Victoria is the pro driving lessons. Then she’ll be off for her test. Thanks for the Langley tip. It’s a good one.
James
Great way of putting it. I love the analogy, because it is a lot like driving, lol. Thanks for the fun, but re-inspiring article to make me wonder how I can spice up my own pages and my blog of-course.
Thanks You,
Ricky
Ricky Strode recently posted..Florida Hypnosis-Hypnosis, NLP, EHE
Twitter: Burnworld
says:
Hi James, missed you at Affiliate Summit, but I too am at the stage of having a teenage daughter learnimg to drive. I like the tie in with doing the basics online.
Rob Boirun recently posted..PC Matic Software Contest Giveaway
Twitter: jenniferdrai
says:
All the points said in this article are well put-together and completely make sense. I agree with web pages having some kind of purpose and call to action feature. Visitors need to be driven by web pages such that whole site is explored effortelessly. Thank you for sharing.
Jennifer Rai recently posted..Steve Jobs Resigns as Apple CEO
Twitter: Bill Suter
says:
Very unique way of driving points home on Internet Marketing. What I liked most was this statement: “Most importantly; don’t clutter up the page – your visitors need to find the link in order to click on it, right? Driving traffic to your site is easier when the road is clear!”
I think that it cover the biggest reason fail. Customer can’t figure out what you want them to do with all the clutter that some people put on there page. It is like driving up to a cross road with to many signs to read, what do you do.
Bill Suter recently posted..Nuts Instead of Carbs May Be Beneficial in Diabetes
I agree.. I’m still new to online marketing and I try to make it as right as possible, but I have yet to create a list..
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Twitter: JulieBMack
says:
Building a list is something that many people have questions or even struggle with. Since lists can be quite spammy, your emails need to be helpful and interesting with the balance of providing useful product links. I find the people who just send you affiliate links immediately get unsubscribed.
Julie McElroy recently posted..How to get One Way Links in an Effective Manner?
Good analogy James, I do a new list at the beginning of each month and fairly stick to it. Many people fail in IM because they just read about things and end up doing nothing, just endlessly going round the roundabout with no clear exit plan!
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Twitter: luganikaran
says:
The second step covers the most important four questions. It forms a viral part of bloggers to question themselves what they are building the page up for . The thing should be targeted so that proper work could be done and the page could come up with bright results.
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Twitter: ascamorlegit
says:
Hate to sound like a parrot but it is all about the list
Keep on building and keep the money coming in!
In England the DSA say the average leaner takes 45 hours of lessons and 22 hours of private practice.
I would say most of my pupils need a lot less than this, but there is always the odd one or two who need a lot more, so I guess it evens out at about that.
As an instructor, I cannot deny how much private practice really helps learners confidence, experience and decision making.
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That’s an interesting comparison between driving lessons and internet marketing. I have recently started using Google Analytics for my websites and it has helped me understand user behavior and where they are clicking. It has also helped me reduce bounce rate by making certain pages better in terms of navigation and content.
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