UnPublished Secret #11 – How To Balance Childcare With Your Home Business

I am constantly amazed with the number of people who come up to me and ask, “John, How do you do it? You operate a profitable home business while taking care of your kids! Can you share your secrets to being a successful entrepreneur while running your family’s household?” Rather than explain it over and over again to people, I decided to share a couple of my “UnPublished Secrets” for how I achieve so much in my duo-role as parent/entrepreneur and thus, simplify my life in the process.

So here’s how this stay-at-home father of three runs his booming home business and successful home life.

The Art of Self-Discovery in Children: As an active parent in my children’s lives, I coach soccer, do the school pick-ups / drop-offs, prepare the meals, and intimately become engage in reading, homework, and play activities. Unfortunately, in today’s society, I see two extremes. The parents who are absent or don’t care and the parents who get OVERLY involved in their kids’ lives. I believe this second parent, who continuously dotes around behind their children, lend themselves to developing children who have difficulties effectively adapting to future situations when “mommy or daddy” is not available. Whether its dispute resolution with another child or falling off the tri-cycle, I think that kids have an uncanny ability to achieve things without constant adult supervision. I find that a health mix of involvement and near-by observation (to make sure that no one gets hurt) enables both the parent and child to flourish. Your child gets to discover things on his/her own, while the parent get to take a needed break from the monotonous routine of childcare. By filling my mind with creativity, I get my million dollar ideas during this important downtime in my duo-role life.

Managing Client Expectations While Working With A Home Business Owner: When I first started my home business, I was horrified if my two year old would enter my office while I was on the phone with a prospect or client. What I found is that rather than lock the doors and keep my children away from me, I realized that I am more successful with my clients if I manage their expectations and share the importance of my family with them. Being with my family was why I got into a home business in the first place! It wasn’t locking the doors so nobody could bother me (as some books suggest). By telling my clients that I work openly at home, keep regular hours (usually when the kids are napping or in the evening or early AM) and that interruptions from my children may occur, I find that my customers are more loyal, more honest, and more profitable. The ones who didn’t like my operational structure were not a good fit for my services anyway.

At the end of the day, it’s the work-life balance that we’re all looking for. By taking charge of the situation rather than allowing others (clients or children) to control our actions, work hours, or family time, I find myself to be more productive with work and having more fun with my children than ever before.

UnPublished Secret #54 – Reading Junk Mail Can Improve Your Website

Are you wondering why your website may be generating tons of visitors but not converting into sales? Does your website have flashy graphics, cool technology and reads like a brochure, but lacks a compelling offer in the first few lines of copy to drive the reader to purchase? Is your online or offline advertising not producing the ROI that you’re looking for? If so, then let me share with you another one of my “UnPublished Secrets” that can squeeze more sales out of your marketing dollars and bring repeat customers back for more.

My simple and inexpensive way to improve the advertising and website of your small business is to read your junk mail and "steal smart".

Professional direct mail copywriters are some of the most influential writers in the world. It is their job to personally motivate others and get potential customers to purchase a particular product RIGHT NOW. Everyday, you probably receive more than your share of direct mail. If you are like most people, you probably recycle the bulk of it. But inside that waste bin are treasures of ideas and copywriting points that you can effectively swipe from the best minds in the business.

Now, I am not suggesting that you plagiarize copy written material. Rather, I am recommending that you find gold nuggets of creativity and modify these ideas into your own advertising campaigns and website designs. Headlines, body copy, and graphical elements are all fair game that can become the inspiration for your business. This is not uncommon practice in the advertising business or Fortune 500 companies. The old saying, “there’s no such thing as an original idea” is actually true. Major corporations and top-notch ad agencies steal ideas from each other everyday. I know this is accurate because I have worked on both sides of the client-agency relationship and I have done my fair share of idea modifications. The trick is to take the “good ideas” and make them your own.

The top notch direct marketing companies offer their best work everyday in your mailbox. Companies like Dell, American Express, and Bed Bath & Beyond, send out millions of junk mail pieces. Even if your business is not related to computers, credit cards or household wares, you can apply the proven methodologies and copy writing that make these companies great into your small business. For example, take a headline for a credit card and tweak it to fit your automotive business. Though the two seem unrelated, it’s actually the motivational words depicted by the professionals that can get your small business noticed. Look for the action words or the way an offer is presented to the reader. Examples are the CAPITALIZED WORDS, --- dashes ---, bold or italicized words, … dots … and starbursts filled with copy that you’ll want to pick up on and change them to fit your business. The more junk mail that you read, the more ideas you’ll get and the more you’ll notice the similarities. That’s probably because, at one time, they stole from each other. That’s ok, nobody is looking and the customer doesn’t really care. Just so long as your advertising and website do not blatantly plagiarize others and also provides the benefits that you promise.

“UnPublished Secret #12” – Step One To AdWords Success

Better than newspaper, direct mail or yellow page advertising, Google AdWords is the direct marketing engine for our generation. It is one of the fastest and best ways to create web traffic and increase your online business presence. AdWords rewards those who are on top of their game and penalizes everyone else. It's easy to outperform the amateurs -- if you know the secrets -- and if you know what you’re doing!

When I help other small business owners and home business entrepreneurs, I am constantly amazed with the haphazardness by which they initially set-up their Google AdWords Campaigns. Done wrong and AdWords will quickly eat up your advertising budget. And believe me, there are thousands of small business owners losing money everyday on AdWords.

Since I've seen so many AdWords Campaigns set-up incorrectly, I want share another “UnPublished Secret”.

Budget – When most people establish their AdWords budget, they typically think about what they have available to spend or how much their willing to lose. The trick to establishing your budget is to think in a totally different way. I typically use $2,000 - $3,000 per campaign per day and usually budget $20,000 - $50,000 per day in total. This might seem like ridiculous amount of money for a small business owner like me to risk. Yet I do this, not because I have a spare $50k, but rather because I truly believe that my business is designed to help others. How else could I reach as many people as I do? By using the laws of attraction, I am positioning myself for the loads of customers that I plan to bring into my website. This “Be-Do-Have” approach nets me tons of daily traffic, and rarely, do I ever, even come close to my budget. Google likes the fact that I’m putting all my chips into the game and rewards me generously. I simply monitor my campaigns, and if I see that I am attracting more business than I can handle, I simply pause my AdWords until later. I find that there’s about a 30% lag from what Google says I’ve spent at that current time, until it’s all tallied at the end of the day. For example, if Google tells me that I’ve spent $100 on AdWords up until a certain point in the day, and I pause a campaign, I would expect to spend approximately $130 in total, when everything is said and done. Still, it’s the mindset of an entrepreneur that Google is looking for. If you are playing it safe with $50 or $100 budgets, I suggest that you play to win with $1,000 - $5,000 daily budgets and your results will demonstrate your commitment.

Delivery Method – There are two possible selections that Google gives you. The default selection is “Standard: Show ads evenly over time”. Again, I believe this default selection is playing the game safe. By taking your AdWords campaign to the next level and selecting “Accelerated: Show ads as quickly as possible”, you are now stepping up the plate. Fail fast and you will quickly learn what works. Then, make modifications to your campaigns and move onwards to success more rapidly.

Position Preference – To the surprise of many people, research tells us that the best position in Google AdWords is not #1. Eye studies confirm that the best positions to showcase your ads are really #4 through #6. If your ads are still languishing in positions beyond #10 or #12, I suggest that you change your ad, increase your bid or drop your campaign. Most people don’t go beyond the first page and you’re just kidding yourself to think that a lot people will find you buried deep in the bowels of Google.

Ad Serving – Google gives us two options again. While the default option, “Optimize: Show better-performing ads more often” may sound good, it does not follow important direct marketing principles or enable us to develop a statistically valid split-test. By selecting “Rotate: Show ads more evenly”, you can accurately and effectively split-test two ads without skewing your results. After each ad has been clicked at least 30 times, you’ll have a statistically valid “winner” at a 95% confidence level. Drop the losing ad and keep trying to beat your control ad. This is the essence of direct marketing and a key to improving your AdWords results.

The principles outlined here provide you with a solid foundation to continuously bring "cash-in-hand prospects" to the front door of your website. By simply using Google AdWords and my other "tricks of the trade", you can build effective pay-per-click advertising campaigns for your business today. Here’s to your immediate success!

“UnPublished Secret #32” – One Keyword Can Run Your Business

After reading several eBooks on AdWords, listening to the “Google AdWords Professionals”, and hiring ad agencies to run my AdWords account, I found these “experts” were using a predictable and flawed approach to AdWords Campaign set-up. Many will advise you to create a list of hundreds or thousands of keywords, group them together by likeness into several AdGroups, and place them under a handful of major Campaign categories. One company that I hired created over 18,000 keywords for me and achieved terrible results. I believe this traditional approach to setting up AdWords Campaigns is laborious, wasteful, and unfocused. With my proven methodologies, you can reduce your costs, increase your click-through rates, and drive more traffic to your website while spending less time managing your AdWords Campaigns. In fact, I am so confident with my approach, that even today, I am able to get 200-300 clicks per day and run one of my businesses from a single keyword! (It doesn’t get much better than that).

So how do I do it? Here’s how.

Keyword Selection – If you haven’t done so already, I suggest that you develop a starting list of 25-50 keywords for your business. Use Google Keyword Tool and Google Suggest (found under the Google Labs section) to compare popularity and relevancy. These keywords should be included in your current or future website and define the value proposition of your business in the eyes of your customer. Put yourself in the customers’ shoes when developing this list and ask yourself, “What would I type into a search engine if I wanted to buy something from my company?” Place your keywords into the Google search engine and see if you find your competitors. If you do, then you’re on the right path. Review your list and go to the root of a word whenever possible. For instance, if you sell “china dolls”, I would test the keywords, “doll” and “dolls”. Though this may seem too broad and you may be concerned about a high expense, you can just place “china doll” or “china dolls” in the headline and body text of your Google Ad to ward off anyone looking for a “Barbie”.

Ad Group Set-Up – This is one of the most critical “UnPublished Secrets” about AdWords. When setting up your Campaigns, only use one keyword under one Ad Group per each Campaign. Let me repeat – one Keyword per one Ad Group per one Campaign. Place that one keyword as keyword = broad match, [keyword] = exact match, and "keyword" = phrase match. This gives each Campaign an extremely high relevancy factor in the eyes of Google and does not dilute your Campaigns with multiple keywords.

Finally, I recommend that you start by testing up to 30 keywords across 30 Campaigns. Place your bids high and lower or raise the cost of each Campaign by $.05 each day until you’ve optimized each keyword cost. Statistically speaking, once you reach 30 clicks on a particular Campaign, you can determine, with a 95% confidence level, whether or not to replace a keyword. Swap out any underperforming keywords that are not converting well and those whose cost per conversion is too high to generate any profits.

Using these “UnPublished Secrets”, you can focus on a handful of keywords and eventually test your way to success. In my business, I tested over 100 keywords before I realized that 6-7 keywords were converting the best. Even better, I found a single keyword bringing in 75% of my business. Talk about a time saver. Now, that my friends, is another holy grail for AdWords advertisers.

"UnPublished Secret #24" - Beating AdWords With Junk Mail Copy

As you probably know, one of the keys to being successful with Google AdWords is “relevancy”. But I find that many small business owners are only trying to outbid others while writing “cute” ads with the hopes that someone will click on their link. When surfing past my various competitors, I am constantly amazed with the poor copy writing skills and the money they are wasting with AdWords. One of my most important tricks to being so successful with AdWords is that I write my ads like the junk mail I receive every day.

Direct marketing copywriting is much more different than brand copywriting or general business advertising. In direct marketing, you have things like “calls to action” to persuade the reader to take some sort of action step (i.e. click on your AdWords ad). Most ads that I review on AdWords are either missing a call to action or are written in the traditional brand advertising method. What do I mean by this? While using the word “you” and “your” makes sense in most advertising, the user experience while surfing the internet is totally different than any other media. I believe this experience is so personal and interactive that the computer actually becomes an extension of the individual.

When people read content on websites, I am convinced that the individual and computer join together. Thus, when information is presented in a “you” or “your” fashion, it is not as well recognized with the user’s subconscious mind as “I” and “me”. When considering whether or not to respond to an AdWords ad, a person will better relate if the headline and body copy contain these aforementioned personalized words "I" or "Me". Why? Because the ad is talking to them and not someone else (i.e. "you" or "your").

In direct mail or junk mail copywriting, it’s called the response devise portion of the mailing. The headline and copy are written in the first person so the reader relates to the information and says “yes” to the offer. A call to action is important as well as the key benefit which best relates to your customers. This key benefit should also include your keyword and thus help satisfy Google’s desire for relevancy.

So, what’s the best way to learn how to write better AdWords ads? Read your junk mail. Especially review the portion which you fill-out, tear-off, and send back to the company. This is called the reply devise. The headline and body copy will most likely include things like “Yes! Sign Me Up” or “Send Me More Information”. As you read more and more junk mail, you’ll get good ideas and start to write better AdWords ads. And as you continue to write better ads and test which ones pull better, you can eventually lower your cost per click because your quality score will improved. And this, my friends, is the holy grail for AdWords advertisers.