Marketing - The Bold Approach Method

Want your own Radio Station? How About One That Only Broadcasts The Information Your Customers and Potential Customers Want? Then You'd Better Start Podcasting.

This is going to add a whole new dimension to blogging, maybe even kill it as we know it today . . . and it is going to give you a whole new, wildly effective way of communicating with your clients.

Podcasting is one of the newest terms floating around the internet and one you'd better learn quickly. I believe this one has some real legs and potential for your busienss. Adam Curry, former MTV VJ created Ipodder software which is basically a news and information aggregator of Ipod podcasts. See How To Podcast For Profit

The way it works is this: basically anyone who has the ability to produce audio can now produce their own radio program or talk show or infomercial and present it to the aggregator for others to find. The aggregator then sends out an RSS feed to all the subscribers letting them know there is new content to download to their iPod or other digital music player to listen to whenever they want. The result is that KOMO in Seattle is now Podcasting some of their stories and rumor is Rush Limbaugh and other talk radio hosts are going to do the same.

The great thing about Ipodder, FeedDemon and Bloglines is that once you subscribe, whenever you connect your iPod or other digital music device, your selected content is automatically downloaded. Now you can listen to your favorite programming whenever you want. You don't have to own an iPod, any digital player or just your PC will do.

So what is important about this? Well, first, your newsletter can now turn into a 10 – 60 minute podcast where you can go into a lot more detail, make it more interactive, have commercials and really communicate with the people who want to hear from you. Setting up your own “radio program” is simple too, the equipment you need to do a high quality job is well under $500.

I’m so confident about this and so sure it will move the bar in marketing that I’m currently completing a free special report about how you can use podcast marketing in your business.

If you’d like more information, please send me an email at podcast@getresponse.com and as soon as it is available, (a week to ten days) I’ll send it to you.

In the meantime, here are a couple of other articles you’ll find interesting: Wired Magazine Podcast Article and Radio Business Report.

Not sure? Look at the number of Google results for the term podcasting. In October there were about 8,000 results, now there is well over 130,000. It is an opportunity that is exploding.

Audio Generator and Ask Database Are Two Great Examples of Tools Available to Small Businesses To Create A Much Better Web Based Customer Experience

For quite some time we’ve been talking about how advertising needs to be focused to the specific individual who most needs or desires the product or service you are selling. To that end, we’ve been diligently researching what tools were available to help us better focus our website on our visitors and their specific needs. Websites focused specifically on the needs of the visitor with content developed by the needs of the viewer are still few and far between. Ours has been no exception . . . until hopefully now.

We’ve wanted to gather more detailed information from our visitors about what THEY wanted to see when they found us and to find out what information we could provide that would be most valuable to THEM. We also wanted tools to accurately track the information and be able to draw conclusions from the new data that we have without having to go through a lot of gyrations in the analysis.

In my search, I found several really good tools that you’ll see us begin to use, but I want to share the two best that I found with you because I think anyone reading this will be able to use these tools as well and increase the effectiveness of their website. The first is the Ask Database. There is really a lot of genius in this tool. It allows you to question your visitors by asking them a question that they can respond to by choosing a multiple choice answer or by writing in their own answer. The software then analyzes each response and gives you a running total of the most relevant responses or the highest number of repeated keywords through the series of answers. Simply go here and you’ll see what the form looks like when you leave the site. The Ask Database also allows you to customize content by linking to specific pages based on choices your visitor makes. We virtually revamped the content of our online newsletter with information gathered from our readers in just 48 hours using this tool and after we changed the content based on what the clients asked for, we got higher praise (and more of it) than ever before. It also links with Audio Generator to provide audio content that you create as well.

Audio Generator is another very simple tool with unbelievable power. Audio Generator allows you to create audio documents for you website, audio postcards for email and the best part is that the files are not hosted on your site. If you’d like an example of how it works, you can visit this page about persuasion on our website and listen to me being interviewed on the topic of persuasion. Just push the play button at the top of the page and listen. It works well with dialup or broadband.

The great power of Audio Generator is to bring easily accessible voice communication to those people who are most interested in learning more quickly. It is the next best thing to actually being there to talk to the person visiting your site. You can give them about triple the amount of information in a voice recording in the same amount of time they would spend on a page viewing it.

Prospects and website visitors demand more of their experience every day and I believe that tools like these will make small business websites more effective than ever. But maybe the best thing of all is that you don’t need to be a web developer or even particular experienced website editor to make these work, they do all the work for you. If you can cut and paste, you can use Audio Generator or The Ask Database.

What would it mean to your site and your business if your visitor could ask a question and you could personally answer them day or night?

We’re about to find out what it means to us and we’ll share our results here with you.

Tapping Hidden Markets, Finding New Markets, Identifying New Profit Centers, New Age Profits

It is very interesting how quickly a market comes out of the closet. The movie What the Bleep do We Know was released in small theatres, primarily in the Northwest, but has become a nationwide underdog phenomena in many ways, but possibly the most important thing it did was make a market identify itself to potential entrepreneurs, or maybe several markets.

The emerging markets that are just showing their faces.

1. The first market is those people who had alternative spiritual beliefs but didn’t have a format for discussing them with their mainstream friends without sounding crazy. The movie gave them an outlet. The could talk about physics, quantum physics, and possibility, a science, rather than a New Age belief system or the crystals they have strategically placed around their home. New Age retail has been the biggest winner as a result. (They just don’t know how to maximize their potential)
2. The second market is made up of people who have been desirous of more “spiritual” (not religious) movies and movies with a real message that make you think or cause you to ponder something bigger than the movie itself. Those same people who suffered silently and sometimes secretly, (enjoyed) all the of the big sex and action cinema of today (I’m not being critical, I spend plenty on movies with sex, action, ribald humor) and I certainly enjoy those with a real message.

In my opinion, the mainstreaming of thinking and questioning old beliefs, ideas and institutions will lead to many opportunities for entrepreneurs. The challenge with the New Age movement and associated players is that they have never figured out how to monetize their beliefs or businesses. But it would appear that is changing or that savvy Entrepreneurs are changing it without them.

Savvy marketers and business people are taking note. One such company, Spiritual Cinema Circle, is using the NETFLIX model with a twist, they are sending out limited release full length and short movies with a message, that make you think and feel, that have won awards at film festivals, but that are not likely to see the light of day. Their target market? Those people who loved What The Bleep. And, rather than sending the five or six DVDs they send you back, they just say keep them and they are doing this all for about $20 a month. Everyone should check this site out and see how to quickly take advantage of emerging markets. NETFLIX changed a whole industry, even Blockbuster has a program that allows you to keep your movies as long as you want.

What fringe markets exist in your industry that are about to be mainstreamed? Where aren’t you looking that you should be?

The business acceleration tactic is this: Spend an hour a week exploring, you’ll be shocked at the profit potential you find.

If you haven't signed up for the free newsletter Bold Insights From Bold Approach, where we explore business acceleration strategy in great detail, why not do it now? Send an email or just sign up at the site.

Blogging For Business Part II - Dave Lakhani and Mark Cuban The Same Person?

Of course not, but at least they are mentioned in the same article. Maybe Mark Cuban will call soon to offer me a guest spot on The Benefactor.

Ramon Ray of smallbiztechnology.com writing for Inc Magazine did a nice brief overview article on blogging for business. It is short and to the point and even includes a brief quote from yours truly.

Take a look, especially if you are new to blogging for business. If you are wondering how you can add or use a blog for your business, Ramon's article gives several good ideas about how to use a blog in your business.