Internet Marketing And The Save The World Thing

Best Free Internet Marketing Saturdays
Thanks to my friends Phil Buckley and Mark Traphagen my impromptu Free Internet Marketing Consulting Saturdays had a great group of new friends (picture on left). Many who attended today are new to Internet marketing.

After more than 12 years as an Internet marketer, more than Gladwell's 10,000 hours, over $30M in sales as a Director of Ecommerce and now helping Raleigh's largest web designer Atlantic BT as Marketing Director it was great to visit with passionate people who may now be beyond confused (lol).

Confused is good. Confusion should be the natural state of any Internet marketer since everything moves to fast to really KNOW anything (lol) There are a few exceptions. Those exceptions all fall under "Save The World" metrics including:

• Knowing your values and passions - the Jim Stengel GROW thing. 
• Doing what you love and being all in - the Seth Godin Linchpin thing.
• Understanding process is all you own so create good ones - the Dov Seidman HOW thing.
• Creating value - the Kim Blue Ocean Strategy thing.   

Align LOVE To Customers - Jim Stengel's Grow

Stengel, a fellow former P&Ger, wrote an influential book Grow: How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the World's Greatest Companies. Grow is about how values based brands outperform the S&P. This wasn't a surprise. Brands such as Apple, FedEx and Pixar that know who they are and how they align with their customer's aspirations and needs will always fare better.

On page 38 Stengel explains "Brand Ideals". For my money this is the most important page in the book. Brand ideals are the aspirational desires of your customers and they include:

• Eliciting Joy.
• Enabling Connection.
• Inspiring Exploration.
• Evoking Pride.
• Impacting Society.

Where does your brand fit with your customers or potential customers "brand ideals"? My personal brand is moving. The older I get the more impacting society matters. As many know I am a cancer survivor and our work on The Story of Cancer Foundation and Tech Cures Cancer is where my personal brand is focused now. What about your business? What about your personal brand.

Are You A Linchpin?
If you haven't read Seth Godin's Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? do so. The book is more manifesto than book about the importance of being all in at all times, the importance of doing what you love and letting the money follow. Love and joy can't be suppressed. Your love of what you do is contagious and important.

I learned the, "You only get one life," lesson the hard way. Read Godin's book and love your life. If that means you must quit a job and be poor for a bit do so. Do what you love is a really good first Internet marketing lesson too.

My theory is the Internet is a huge amplifying lie detector. The web doesn't create anything it amplifies what you bring. If you bring love it amplifies. If you bring anger it gets amplified. Loving what you do makes Internet marketing MUCH easier.

Processes Are All You "Own", So Create GREAT OnesDov Seidman's Book How: Why How You Do Anything Means Everything is the importance of creating GREAT business processes. Look at Zappos or Amazon for why processes are so important. Both of these great Internet marketers knew how they treat people in a connected digital age is a form of advertising. Don't trip over the big money to pick up the change and always refine and share your business processes.

Swim In Blue Oceans
What is magical about Cirque Du Soleil?

Cirque Du Soleil reinvented the circus. They stripped the big costs items out such as travel and Elephants replacing them with lower costs items such as amazing athletes and having people come to them. Cirque is a blue ocean inside the red ocean of the circus business vertical. What is your Unique Value Proposition. How are you disrupting your business vertical? Kim's book Blue Ocean Strategy: How To Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant is a masterwork even it takes a few readings to get :).

Now you are ready to save the world and win as an Internet marketer and neither of those will be difficult for anyone who joined us at Saladelia Cafe in Durham today.