How Discovering the “Marketer’s Mindset” Tripled My Brick-and-Mortar Profits . . . and Eliminated 80% of My Work

1. How Discovering the “Marketer’s Mindset” Tripled My Brick-and-Mortar Profits . . . and Eliminated 80% of My Work by Bill Thomas Jr. CASE STUDY marketersmindset.com

2. Contents: • Introduction to Mindset • What is “Mindset”? The Definition of Mindset. • The Buyer’s Mindset and Marketing vs. Selling • Using Mindset Principles to Grow Your Business and Improve Your Quality of Life • Implementing Pareto’s 80/20 Mindset: The Fastest, Easiest Way to Add Profits and Save Time • Develop a Marketing Mindset that Uses Your Website As an Automated “Base of Operation” • Determine Which of your Customer’s Emotions to Exploit and TARGET by Understanding and “Getting Into” the Buyers Mindset • How To Develop a “Keyword Mindset” to Prepare Your Business for SEO, local SEO, and PPC. • PPC Keyword Research Lays the Groundwork for SEO and Local SEO • Spy On (“Research”) Your Competitors While You Develop Your Killer Keyword List • Develop a “Competition Crusher” Mindset and a System for Automatic Disqualification • Bonus Chapter: My Top 10 Secret Tips, Tricks, and Techniques That Improve My Business Every Day • Resources CASE STUDY marketersmindset.com

3. Introduction to MINDSET My brick-and-mortar business had leveled off and sales had stopped growing, so in June of 2006, I took Mark Hendricks up on his first “Baltimore 2 day Internet-Success-System” Mastermind Session. I attended thinking that an internet presence would lead to more sales, and that would kick-start my business. Mark managed to change my thinking and my overall MINDSET. CASE STUDY marketersmindset.com

4. My mindset before the course: • I reasoned that strong internet presence and more sales was my solution to slowed growth. • I thought  More sales = More Profits = Better Lifestyle The correct formula (Mark’s)  Money + Time = Lifestyle My original mindset would have resulted in more problems and less free time. • I had some experience with online leads and noticed that these prospects turned into much better customers. • I had a feeling that going “offline” to send prospects “online” would be big. Nobody in my business was doing it and I wanted to be the first. • What started out as an attempt to create some online presence turned out to be a thought provoking, life changing event. • Even though I had success, I was doing the CORE things WRONG, and was getting ready for a mindset transplant. • Discovering how to change MY mindset was the single biggest reason for changes in my decisions and how I would market my business. CASE STUDY marketersmindset.com

5. What Is “Mindset”? The Definition of Mindset: • mind●set or mind-setn. • A fixed mental attitude or disposition that predeterminesa person’s responses to and interpretations of situations • An inclination or habit So mindset, by definition is really just a “fixed mental attitude” that “predetermines a person’s response”. Learning more about mindset and how it affected my decisions and the decisions of buyers made a big difference in how I marketed my services to prospects. CASE STUDY marketersmindset.com

6. Mindset can consist of habits, mental attitudes, routines, established thought processes – some good, some destructive. • We are conditioned from childhood to believe certain things – like “don’t make a fool of yourself”, “don’t take risks”. By the time we reach adulthood we have been programmed to think and act in certain ways. • Your mind is your most valuable asset so you need to take responsibility for its operation - - - because your thoughts dictate your action. • We must learn to take control of our thoughts and change our mindsets. • We must also learn to recognize the mindsets of others, like buyers, because when we know their mindset we can often predetermine their actions. CASE STUDY marketersmindset.com

7. The Buyer’s Mindset and Marketing vs. SellingWhen You Understand the Buyer’s Mindset, You Have the Keys to the Marketer’s Kingdom • People love to buy, but hate to be sold, so we should concentrate on helping people to buy rather than trying to sell them. • The customer’s mindset is that she doesn’t care one little bit about you or your family or your kids or your new trucks, she just wants to know: “What’s In It for Me?” and “How Can You Solve My Problem?” CASE STUDY marketersmindset.com

8. I Was Marketing to Customers All Wrong! Sure, I Was Successful For 30 Years, But I Clearly Had the Wrong Mindset About Marketing • I was “selling” to the customer rather than “helping her buy”. • My website, advertisements, and brochures were all about our company, and very little or nothing about the customer. • I needed to put myself in my customer’s shoes - - and to design my marketing around their wants, needs, and desires (mostly their wants). . . . So I Set Out on the Mission of Dissecting My Company and Finding All the Ways I Could Implement What I Had Learned. CASE STUDY marketersmindset.com

9. Using Mindset Principles to Grow Your Business and Improve Your Quality of LifeEvaluating Your Business from a “Mindset Perspective” Can Uncover Hidden Pockets of Diamonds When I Drilled Down Into Almost 30 Years of Data, Some Numbers Appeared That Should Have Been Obvious Long, Long Ago Knowing This Important Information Would Lead to Changes in Thinking . . . Changes in My Marketing Mindset CASE STUDY marketersmindset.com

10. Of Considerable Note: • Roughly 20% of the leads produced 80% of the business! • Roughly 20% of the customers produced 80% of the profits! • Roughly 20% of the customers required 80% of the time! • Roughly 20% of the customers caused 100% of the problems! • Each sale required 2.5 visits, often at up to 60 miles one way, one trip was usually to sign a contract. • Each non-sale required 2.1 visits, same distance. • Of all the leads we generated, the internet generated leads for our service business were among the highest converting, most profitable, most trusting, and least problematic. • The lead cost was slightly higher, at about $150 per conversion based on an average for others of $100, but without the headaches and they were highly profitable. • Could this be a viable trend? CASE STUDY marketersmindset.com

11. Questions: • Could we reduce our number of customer visits per sale? • Would it be possible to get rid of the 80% customer base that was dragging down our profits and wasting tons of time? • Could we get better over-all customers? • Would internet based leads continue to convert into better customers? • Would it be possible to automate the whole process of lead generation and sales to some degree using the internet? • Could we add an element of control with a properly designed website? • If we took conventional leads (not internet-generated) and pushed them through the website in some way, would the survivors be as good as internet-generated leads. CASE STUDY marketersmindset.com

12. Implementing Pareto’s 80/20 Mindset: The Fastest, Easiest Way to Add Profits and Save Time. . . if you couple it with Mark Hendricks’ “Law of Subtraction” • Careful analysis showed we spent most of our efforts catering to the 80% of the customers that were dragging down the company. Why were we obsessed with these people? It’s a matter of mindset! Why not just try to cut them loose? • Why were we taking the best customers for granted? Because they were profitable? Why not give them even more, better, reward them. • My primary focus and new mindset was going to be to generate better customers through the website, give them much more and try to do it with an automatic system! CASE STUDY marketersmindset.com

13. Develop a Marketing Mindset that Uses Your Website As an Automated “Base of Operation”As I structured my new system, I set up some guidelines to get some research benefits by testing and tracking as I went. My rules: • Automate the site in every possible way. • Design with “systems” in mind. • Test and track everything. • No programming or web building help from outsiders. • In house generated keyword lists. • Google AdWords as the main traffic source (at first). • Design for SEO, with an emphasis on local SEO. • No Audio or Video yet (one video exception, a “skylight” video). CASE STUDY marketersmindset.com

14. ADDITIONAL WEBSITE GUIDELINES • No external backlinks yet, only internal linking strategies. • Automated testimonial collection. • Attempt to communicate electronically only, try to eliminate most phone conversations. • Extra benefits for customers using the site: • Before, during and after pictures uploaded to the site. • Specifications and drawings on the site. • Contract posted on the site. • Downloadable information. • Try to get the leads generated outside the site “into the site”. • Make an effort to advertise offline with the primary interest to drive the prospects to the site. “Offline to online”. • Google rewards large sites, so design with “Authority Site” status in mind. • Lots of pictures for ranking in Google “Images”. CASE STUDY marketersmindset.com

15. Develop a Knowledge of Site Building and HTML The main reason I was able to publish a high ranking web system so quickly is because I made the commitment to learn some HTML and get to know a few WYSIWYG editors. I would be at least one year behind where I am right now, if not for the ability to build quick landing pages, squeeze pages, offer pages, and more. Now that I’m experienced, and I know the “ins-and-outs”, I can supervise others to do that work for me if I choose. Please don’t lose out because you are waiting 3 weeks for your Webmaster to edit a page and test something or be able to take payments! • Using a WYSIWYG editor is as easy as using MS Word once you get going • Basic HTML is really pretty easy to learn • By getting an “insider’s view”, you’ll get the “behind the scenes” knowledge you need to develop new strategies, like: • SEO, local SEO, linking strategies, tags and descriptions, PPC • It only took me a week to learn and develop my first 100+ page site. • Take Action and Just Do It! CASE STUDY marketersmindset.com

16. Determine Which of your Customer’s Emotions to Exploit and TARGET by Understanding and “Getting Into” the Buyers Mindset: Since 2 out of 3 people are inclined to take action by fear, I considered that to be the strongest buying mindset in my case, and decided to capitalize on: • The fear of bad contractors doing shoddy work and the disastrous things can happen when things go bad. • The “FUD” Factor – Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. • Use the formula: Define the problem, agitate, inform, solve the problem. • **Tip** Establish the “Educate and Inform” type of sales approach to achieve “Obvious Expert Status” and the ISS “know you, like you, trust you” – relationship. CASE STUDY marketersmindset.com

17. How To Develop a “Keyword Mindset” to Prepare Your Business for SEO, local SEO, and PPC. • Keyword Mindset 1: Keywords are bait that lure prospects and spiders to your website. Spiders for SEO, and customers for PPC. • Keyword Mindset 2: Keywords are questions. Figure out the questions and then focus on the solutions. Once you understand this you’re way ahead of the crowd. • Think like your customer. Understand their pains, fears, hopes, and wants. When people enter keywords into a search box, they have a pain. They have a question that needs a solution in the form of information as to how they can immediately resolve their problem. • Your mindset is to put yourself in their shoes and ask yourself: “What keywords will my ideal prospects type into their search boxes? If you don’t know the right questions, in the form of keywords, you might as well shut down your website. CASE STUDY marketersmindset.com

18. Keyword Mindset 3: Keywords need constant testing and tracking. Through testing your keyword lists will be analyzed, revisited, and revised. It’s not a “set and forget” process in PPC anymore. Your true competition should and probably will be very aggressive. • Keyword Mindset Mistake Most Marketers Make: Choosing initial Keywords for your initial list is easy, which is exactly why marketers get lulled into a comfort zone. Usually, they make a big push to create the initial list and then never revisit it. Then “business” takes over and marketers fail to take advantage of the tremendous testing capabilities available online. • You must track and test, split-test and retest, and then do it again and again. CASE STUDY marketersmindset.com

19. PPC Keyword Research Lays the Groundwork for SEO and Local SEO • For PPC, Keyword targeting is a virtually free exercise. • SEO however, requires a significant financial and time commitment for each keyword. This means you must aim carefully before you shoot. • Prioritize what you want to rank for and precisely which pages on your site will rank for each of those terms. It is pointless to do SEO without having decided this first. • So, the shortcut to SEO success is to target hundreds of keywords in PPC. Get reliable traffic and conversion rate stats for all keywords and drop them into a spreadsheet. Use that as the basis on which keywords to use for your SEO. • SEO is difficult, but herein lies the opportunity and the mindset. If SEO were EASY, all of your competitors would rank well. So take some action and get ranking. CASE STUDY marketersmindset.com

20. “Keyword Kenny” Spy On (“Research”) Your Competitors While You Develop Your Killer Keyword List Here’s the Exact system I use to generate money pulling keyword lists that work like magic. It requires some research and a couple of tools, and it will systematically solve the challenges my readers ask about most: • How do I develop an effective Keyword list? Where do I start? • How can I find out which Keywords my competitors are using? • How do I develop an unbeatable USP (Unique Selling Proposition). • How do I dominate my niche market? CASE STUDY marketersmindset.com

21. MARKETERS MINDSET KEYWORD RESEARCH SYSTEM First, take your lowest common denominator keyword, like “roof” or “roofing” and run it through your keyword suggestion tool. I start with WordTracker in the NicheBot2 System. You can use one of the FREE tools for this at first, but the drawback is you’ll end up with the same keywords everybody else has. Here’s the free version of WordTracker:http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/ CASE STUDY marketersmindset.com

22. MARKETERS MINDSET KEYWORD RESEARCH SYSTEM 2.Find the first 10 keyword results that make sense to your business and record them in an Excel Spreadsheet File. I do more than 10 to start with, but that’s me. CASE STUDY marketersmindset.com

23. MARKETERS MINDSET KEYWORD RESEARCH SYSTEM Analyze these using Google’s Keyword Tool. Determine the 4 keywords (or phrases) that have the “Highest Search / Lowest Competition” Ratio. Use these as your PRIMARY keywords. They should help get your site ranked naturally very quickly, and will do well in your PPC campaigns. https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal Note: Keyword Advertiser Competition is getting very stiff these days, and you’ll see that reflected in the tool results. CASE STUDY marketersmindset.com

24. MARKETERS MINDSET KEYWORD RESEARCH SYSTEM The keywords I used for my project were: “roof estimate”, “roof repairs”, “roofing services”, and “roof inspection”. Since we operate in Maryland, I also added “MD”, and “Maryland” (and lots of other local keywords) to the keyword phrases. I use Brainy Zip for cities, local keywords and zip codes: http://www.brainyzip.com/ Type each keyword into the Google Search Box and first note the # of pages found. If the # is less than 1,000,000 it’s pretty “easy” to rank on the first page. In fact, that’s us at #1! CASE STUDY marketersmindset.com

25. MARKETERS MINDSET KEYWORD RESEARCH SYSTEM 6.Next, make note of the websites shown on the first SERP in both the natural and paid search. Put them in spreadsheets marked “Natural Search” and “Paid Search”. These will be your main competitors, since you will be shooting for the first page in both natural and paid results. • You’ll probably end up with 15 or so sites on each spreadsheet. Start looking at their sites one by one. On the paid side, you actually need to click on their ad because their destination URL may actually be different than the URL posted in the ad. I don’t like costing competitors money for my research, but I think it all evens out and I don’t feel too bad about it. • Note that there are about 50 advertisers on the paid side. The top bid is about a $7.00 click, but that’s where you want to be for this market. CASE STUDY marketersmindset.com

26. MARKETERS MINDSET KEYWORD RESEARCH SYSTEM • Next, notice if they run AdSense on their site and note that on your spreadsheet. We’ll talk about this later. • Then, see if you can determine their USP and note that. • Make notes of their features and benefits and anything else you feel will be important later. • Also, determine and note their affiliate programs or partners on your spreadsheet. Maybe you could offer the same or competing programs. CASE STUDY marketersmindset.com

27. MARKETERS MINDSET KEYWORD RESEARCH SYSTEM • Use “stealth” software to evaluate their PPC campaigns. I use “KeyWord Elite”. KeyWord Elite will export data to an Excel Spreadsheet for you giving you all of their keywords, ad construction, and ad positions in AdWords. Pay attention to “tracking links” in their PPC campaigns – we’ll get back to that later also. • Keyword Elite has been one of my best software purchases EVER. The amount of information gained and time saved for me is in the tens of thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours. CASE STUDY marketersmindset.com

28. MARKETERS MINDSET KEYWORD RESEARCH SYSTEM • 13. This entire process should take about a day. Can you see how you will have all the information you need to dominate your market? Now the mindset here is to take all that information about your competition and develop your perfect USP. No one should be able to touch it. • Now, for the final research step (for now). Go back to step #2 and run each one of your 10 keywords through Keyword Elite to get your big keyword list. I usually end up with a few thousand. Start deduping them and form them into AdWords Campaigns and Ad Groups. • Make sure your landing pages are relevant to your Ad Groups and start with your AdWords. Build as many landing pages as necessary. This will help with Quality Score and “Google Slap”. • Start adding content to your site concentrating on using the 4 PRIMARY Keywords from step 3. • Submit an XML site map to Google through their webmaster tools section each time you make significant changes. Google loves this and will spider your site often. It’s also a great way to get a site indexed. • www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ CASE STUDY marketersmindset.com

29. MARKETERS MINDSET KEYWORD RESEARCH SYSTEM • If you’re running a local campaign, make sure you add your local information and/or do your geo-targeting. The mindset here is Just Start Doing It! Take action. Local keywords are pretty easy to rank for in natural search because not many marketers are doing it. That will change, so get in while you can. Tip: Don’t overlook using zip codes. • A good resource: http://www.brainyzip.com/ • Test, track, and brainstorm for more keywords. Your keyword research is never complete. • Some Quick and Practical SEO Tips Use your primary keywords in your: • URL (Important for quick ranking) • Title, Header, and ALT tags • Description tag (Very important) • Bullets • Anchor Text (Extremely important) • Testimonials • Content, of course CASE STUDY marketersmindset.com

30. Develop a “Competition Crusher” Mindset and a System for Automatic Disqualification. . . and you don’t even have to talk badly about them As a marketer, you want to spend most of your time and effort “helping the customer buy”. The last thing you need is that pesky competitor of yours trying to steal your customers, so you should have a clear-cut strategy to “knock your competitor out of the box” before he gets his claws into your deal. You can implement this mindset very easily, and nicely, but be ruthless! In most cases, he won’t even know you’re doing it, because he doesn’t possess the marketers mindset. CASE STUDY marketersmindset.com

31. Remember back a few slides where we decided to implement the 80/20 rule and Mark Hendricks’ law of subtraction? The mindset here is, now that you’ve eliminated all the “clutter”, you’re getting the best 20% of all possible customers. Is your competition going to treat YOUR customer the way they deserve to be treated? No way! You will overdeliver and form a relationship, and market to them forever, and they will send you more customers. . . and on, and on. You’ll be happy to give your competitors the other 80% -- and they’ll be begging to BUY these customers from you -- so go ahead and set up an automated system to sell them these leads. You might make more money from selling leads than you do from your primary business! Three Easy Ways I Automatically Disqualify My Competition • Develop your USP so no one can compete with it. Remember the research we did on our competitors? Your USP should be so strong and so repetitive now that your opponent will not stand a chance. Just for good measure, throw in HIS USP as a freebie, if he even has one. CASE STUDY marketersmindset.com

32. 2. Put an ad on their site. What?? In your research, you already determined which competitors displayed Google AdSense on their site. The mindset here is to get your ad on their site! My ads usually read something like this: “Beware of Roofing Scams – Don’t Get An Estimate Until You Download This FREE Report” . . . and then my company information with my report.If they’re silly enough to run AdSense in the first place, they aren’t likely to notice! Go to: www.google.com/ads/sitetargeted.html 3. Offer a downloadableConsumer Awareness Guide. I make sure my guide includes plenty of recommendations of the services we provide that our competitors don’t. And rightly so! Inside the Guide is a Printable Consumer Checklist. Just picture my competitor standing there in front of the buyer’s home trying to explain why he doesn’t provide some of the benefits that are on my checklist. Of course, mine is already filled out, with pictures and diagrams, and all sorts of other information and benefits, on the customers own personal web page that I have provided for them online. CASE STUDY marketersmindset.com

33. Bonus Chapter: My Top 10 Secret Tips, Tricks, and Techniques that Improve My Business Every Day • How to use testimonials for SEO (especially in local service markets). • Local SEO – How to use internal linking strategies to get on page 1. • AdWords: What do you do if you have a really great ad but want to test another ad against it – but don’t want to lose half the revenue if the new ad bombs? • Brick-and-mortar strategy: What to do with a customer when you’ve sold her every product you have. CASE STUDY marketersmindset.com

34. MARKETERS MINDSET TIPS TRICKS AND TECHNIQUES CONTINUED • How to get the whole community to sell your local business products and services. • Offline to online strategies and whythey work for local business. • What’s the very first thing you want to do in your AdWords Campaign when it’s up and running? • How to sell leads to your competition. • What can you do with the AdWords tracking links from our Keyword Research Project? • How to “Repurpose” Your Best Customers. CASE STUDY marketersmindset.com

35. Resources For ISS Group Members Only:www.MarketersMindset.com/iss-resources.html CASE STUDY marketersmindset.com