Fish in a barrel...

I had a friend of mine tell me once that he had found an amazing source for leads at a very competitive cost and that he was getting excellent conversions from the leads. He then went on to tell me that he was going to drop all of the rest of his marketing and only stick with this source for all of his leads.

Hmmm not a good idea I told him.

A couple weeks later I saw him online and he told me that his new program was still providing him with great leads but that the cost was going up slightly every week.

He decided to continue on with the program since he was still getting good leads from it.

Hmmm not a good idea I told him.

So a month goes by and I see him at a meet and greet and ask him how everything is going.

Not so good he says. Since he had dropped all of his other advertising to go with what seemed to be a dream, he needed to keep investing more and more money into the program to get the same level of leads that his business needed.

"I do not understand what happened" he said "The leads use to be so cheap and the conversions use to be so much better. Now I am scrambling since overall my leads are costing more then ever!"

Fish in a barrel I said.

"What?" he asked.

Fish in a barrel...

You see getting leads is a lot like getting fish from a barrel. The fish on the top are easy to pick out and take far less effort. The more fish you try to get out of a barrel the harder it becomes. The harder it is to get the fish the more effort you have to put out. The more effort you have to put out the less effort you have to put towards other things.

Get it? Fish in a barrel...

If you would have stuck with your other avenues of advertising (barrels of fish) and spread your budget around evenly, you would not be in the mess you are in now. I am not saying do not use your new source for leads, I am saying do not squeeze it so hard. Loosen up your hold on that lead source and go back to some of the other consistent lead generators you have used in the past. Just balance them out to where you are getting the best return on your investment.

Good ad campaigns take time. There are no easy answers or magic beans. Watch your cost per conversion on all leads and spread it out till it is balanced. When new opportunities come around take some float budget and put it towards it to see if it is a good addition to your current campaign.

Now stop sticking your head so far down those fish barrels!

The Politics of the Internet

I thought for the first article I write on our new sites web column on how to increase web traffic, that I would have some fun and try to tie the internet to our “real” world through politics. You can look forward to a new article every month and if there is something specific you would like me to write about please feel free to give me an e-mail at jrmason@novatexsolutions.com.

If I were to tell you that there is not much difference between the internet and traditional politics would you buy into that? Or would you go on believing that the internet is all about technology and numbers and other geeky stuff?

For arguments sake, and because I need something to write this article on, let’s for a moment consider that there is no difference between the two, politics and the internet that is, and in order to support this crazy notion I’ll make a comparison of choice terms from the political spectrum to the internet arena.

Let’s tie together these terms. Some of them you may know some of them you may not…here we go;

Search Engines = Political Parties: There are really only two political parties, Google and Everyone Else, and much like communism in China, Google is not looking at giving up its reign anytime soon.

Websites = Political Candidates: You have a website? You want to be seen in front of someone else’s website that is promoting similar website content? Welcome to internet politics. Please start begging, exchanging or buying votes from others!

Indexed Web Sites = Potential Voters: You have a website? Vote for me by placing a link from your site to mine…but you should only vote for me if you believe in me or if your price was right and I bought your vote!

Website Content = Campaign Issues for the Candidate: Believe me, nobody cares about what you think so don’t even try to promote your issues. Go find out what is important to your political party and create your website around that. That is if you ever want to be seen on the political radar.

In Bound Links = A vote or a ballot cast for a political candidate: Votes are all that matter in politics right?! Does it matter how you get those votes though or who votes for you? In bound links right now seem to be the number one factor in determining which sites should come up in front of another and just as the weight of certain political supporters hold more value in the political spectrum the same thing goes for on the internet.

So now that we have the basics down let’s map out how we win an election and come up in front of our fellow candidates and maybe even one day become President!

So you are new to the political arena huh? Well, rule number 1 for a rookie is to not bite off more then you can chew!

It is better to start locally and try and win a local seat in office and gain local support from people you know and who believe in what you stand for before heading out on your National campaign.

One of the sad truths about politics is that it is not really about what you want to support, but rather what people want you to support. So step one is to do some research on what matters most to people and how particular people can be with the details behind what they are looking for. Take some advice from me…go with the majority…you will stick out more in the crowd.

So you have done the research, now pick a group of important campaign issues that have a tie into one another based off of that research. Your political party will like that. It shows consistency and predictable content…ummm I mean it will make it look like you probably will not waiver off of key political issues in the future.

Shoot, there sure is a lot of planning that goes into politics!

Ok, back to business. We have a search engine placement; I mean a political race to win!

So now you found out what issues mean most to the people in your area and you have written wonderful speeches and promotional campaign material to support your research. So how exactly are you going to get people to listen to what you have to say?

Well, what you need to do is go out and get all the local stores to put up your campaign posters, especially any of them that have anything to do with what you are campaigning under. Although, any poster will help, you never know who will see them.

How many posters should you put up? Well, the number of posters you need to put up have to do with how many people you are running against and how many posters they have up. They have 100 posters up? You better put up 101 and you better make sure that you put them in areas that are as noticeable as there posters!

So you did your research, you wrote your speeches, you created your propaganda…errr your posters and you pinned them up all over your town.

You launch your campaign and do to all of your hard work and due diligence you get the whole town to hear your message. Now that you have an audience you better hope your speech is good!

At the end of the day you won the election and after a term in office you feel confident in running for State! Back to square one…research…acquire…analyze…and win!

No doubt about it, you are headed for President!