The Top 100 brands have a total value of $2.04 trillion. Does that sound like a big deal to you? Yeah it sounds that way to me too. Let’s take a look at the top 5 brands in the world as ranked by total value.
1. Google
2. IBM
3. Apple
4. Microsoft
5. Coca-Cola
I don’t know anyone in the developed world that has not heard of every one of these Brands. Name recognition is just one aspect of Branding, but it is a very powerful one. Take just a few seconds and think about each of these Brands separately. I am willing to bet that you can tell me what their logo looks like, what the company colors are, what many of their products are, what the public perception of them is, ect…
Let me give you an example of successful branding:
Jim sneezes so he reaches for a Kleenex. The sneeze causes his ears to pop and he grabs a Q-tip to clean his ear. He is left with a scratchy throat so he grabs a Coke and takes a sip. Wondering what makes your ears pop when you sneeze, Jim decides to Google it.
That paragraph is what you call the ultimate in Branding. Let’s break it down shall we? What Jim really used was a tissue, but the branding has been so successful for Kleenex that the words are synonymous. The same is true with the cotton swab and soft drink. Another marker in ultimate success when it comes to Branding is when your company name becomes a word of its own. Google was turned into a verb to describe the act of looking up information online.
Google has built such a powerful brand that they surpassed all other search engines, to become synonymous with internet search. For those of you that are not as big of a tech nerd as I am let me give you a little history. The first search engine ever is one that most people have never heard of. It was called Archie and was created in 1990 at a University in Montreal and was short for “archives”. This search engine was on a page that presented itself as “Archie Query Form.” Archie was actually created before the World Wide Web existed and lived on Gopher. Six years and several search engines later and we have Google. Did you know that the original name for Google was BackRub due to the backlink indexing it was based on? Did you know that the name Google is actually the miss-spelled word googol? Did you know that the simplistic design of the Google website is due to the fact that the creators were not technically versed in HTML code? What is my point of all of this history of Google and what does that have to do with you?
It is to prove that you do not have to be the first at something to be successful. You don’t have to have an original idea. You don’t have to be technically proficient in software, computers or technology. You don’t even have to be a good speller to be successful. You do however have to be good at Branding and selling yourself.
So how do you become good at Branding and selling yourself? That will be the subject of my next article; at least I will start in on it. Explaining how to successfully Brand yourself will take several articles and I hope to get them out soon.
Nick A Adams
http://www.nickaadams.com
Friday, December 17, 2010
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Attraction Marketing -- Myth or Magic
If you are a network marketer or you are looking to become one, then you have no doubt seen the term Attraction Marketing all over the Internet. It is currently being touted as the new BIG thing in network marketing and as the greatest thing since sliced bread.
So what you really want to know is Attraction Marketing really magic or is it a myth? Well I can tell you one thing for sure......it certainly is not anything remotely new. It is however absolutely necessary if you want to make Real Income Online. So what is Attraction Marketing you ask, it is absolutely nothing more than what the corporate world calls "Branding".
This is one thing that I have seen over and over again on the Internet and I am sure you have as well. Videos of these young network marketers who tell you how they graduated from college and decided that the Corporate World was not for them and in fact they scoff at the Corporate World. In the next sentence they tell you how they threw caution to the wind and became self employed and made a fortune on the Internet and they owe it all to attraction marketing.
Now this is the part that makes me literally laugh out loud, they say this like it is a brand new concept that they created, when in fact Attraction Marketing is nothing more than Corporate Branding. If it were not for the Network Marketing GURUs out there, you know the ones that really do make big money from network marketing and have for years, who taught these young entrepreneurs about Attraction Marketing, these young folks would not be earning more than a few dollars. Now what all of these successful young Network Marketers don't realize is that the old GURUs that taught them everything there is to know about Attraction Marketing, learned it from their experience in the Corporate World when they were applying Corporate Branding to the companies they used to work for.
So how can I sit here and tell you that Attraction Marketing really is nothing more than Corporate Branding? Well if you know anything about me then you would know that I have been creating websites and web applications for corporate America for over 14 years. In that time I have been applying the principles of Corporate Branding to all of the products that I create for them. Brick and Mortar companies have know for years that it is all about customer perception. That is if the public perception is that your products are inferior, well then your products are inferior......even if you have the best products on the market. If you can brand your products as the highest quality and most reliable, then that is how the paying customers will see them....even if it is not the truth. Now you still have to have a decent product, but 75% of it is public perception. To give you a good example look at the Pet Rock. In the 1970s this plain rock bought at a builders supply store and re-branded as a live pet made Gary Dahl a millionaire.
Now if you still don't see how Corporate Branding is related to Attraction Marketing, well then you have not done your homework on Attraction Marketing. What attraction marketing mentors will teach you is that YOU are the corporation. That is right....it is that simple. You are the corporation. Now has that sunk in yet? One more time then...YOU = Corporation. The fundamental principle of Attraction Marketing is that you have to market yourself. You have to Brand yourself as something of value. If you can create the perception that you are more valuable than those you come into contact with, well then you have positioned corporation YOU at the top of public perception. Once you have branded corporation YOU as one of the best, your contacts....aka your public.... will see everything that you have to offer ( known as your products ) as superior to all others. This is when they will start to pursue you to get to be a part of Corporation You. When that happens is when you really start to make Real Income Online.
In my next blog entry I will continue to look at personal branding and how it can take whatever business you are involved in to the next level.
Nick A Adams
http://www.nickaadams.com
So what you really want to know is Attraction Marketing really magic or is it a myth? Well I can tell you one thing for sure......it certainly is not anything remotely new. It is however absolutely necessary if you want to make Real Income Online. So what is Attraction Marketing you ask, it is absolutely nothing more than what the corporate world calls "Branding".
This is one thing that I have seen over and over again on the Internet and I am sure you have as well. Videos of these young network marketers who tell you how they graduated from college and decided that the Corporate World was not for them and in fact they scoff at the Corporate World. In the next sentence they tell you how they threw caution to the wind and became self employed and made a fortune on the Internet and they owe it all to attraction marketing.
Now this is the part that makes me literally laugh out loud, they say this like it is a brand new concept that they created, when in fact Attraction Marketing is nothing more than Corporate Branding. If it were not for the Network Marketing GURUs out there, you know the ones that really do make big money from network marketing and have for years, who taught these young entrepreneurs about Attraction Marketing, these young folks would not be earning more than a few dollars. Now what all of these successful young Network Marketers don't realize is that the old GURUs that taught them everything there is to know about Attraction Marketing, learned it from their experience in the Corporate World when they were applying Corporate Branding to the companies they used to work for.
So how can I sit here and tell you that Attraction Marketing really is nothing more than Corporate Branding? Well if you know anything about me then you would know that I have been creating websites and web applications for corporate America for over 14 years. In that time I have been applying the principles of Corporate Branding to all of the products that I create for them. Brick and Mortar companies have know for years that it is all about customer perception. That is if the public perception is that your products are inferior, well then your products are inferior......even if you have the best products on the market. If you can brand your products as the highest quality and most reliable, then that is how the paying customers will see them....even if it is not the truth. Now you still have to have a decent product, but 75% of it is public perception. To give you a good example look at the Pet Rock. In the 1970s this plain rock bought at a builders supply store and re-branded as a live pet made Gary Dahl a millionaire.
Now if you still don't see how Corporate Branding is related to Attraction Marketing, well then you have not done your homework on Attraction Marketing. What attraction marketing mentors will teach you is that YOU are the corporation. That is right....it is that simple. You are the corporation. Now has that sunk in yet? One more time then...YOU = Corporation. The fundamental principle of Attraction Marketing is that you have to market yourself. You have to Brand yourself as something of value. If you can create the perception that you are more valuable than those you come into contact with, well then you have positioned corporation YOU at the top of public perception. Once you have branded corporation YOU as one of the best, your contacts....aka your public.... will see everything that you have to offer ( known as your products ) as superior to all others. This is when they will start to pursue you to get to be a part of Corporation You. When that happens is when you really start to make Real Income Online.
In my next blog entry I will continue to look at personal branding and how it can take whatever business you are involved in to the next level.
Nick A Adams
http://www.nickaadams.com
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Sharing my adventure
I have been making websites, both intra-net and inter-net for many years. I have also been making applications and tools to go along with those websites. For many years I worked as an employee of a few Fortune 100 companies. Over the years I came to realize that my work was making these companies hundreds of millions of dollars, while I was paid well for it....it simply was not enough of the pie in my opinion. At this point I began to work for myself, however I was still doing the exact same jobs, just that now I was being paid much more than I was before. Now there is nothing wrong with making more than $10,000 a month. Believe me you can live quite well off of that much income. The problem for me was that I had run smack dab into the ceiling of my earnings. I was doing all the work that I had time in a day to do. It just was not possible to make more money than I was currently making, unless I was to start raising my prices.....and the market only allows you to charge so much.
This is the point where I started to investigate Multi-Level Marketing using the internet. I studied several different opportunities and found them all to be relatively the same as far as concept, principle, and compensation. So I joined one and followed all of the training and advice I was given. I participated on all the phone calls, I made my lists, I wrote out my goals. I purchased leads and cold called them all. This was how it was done in the 90’s. I met with moderate success and within a few months I was earning more than I was spending. I was adding 10 to 15 new distributers a month into my down-line. The problem was that out of those 10-15 a month, only one or two were sticking around more than a couple of months, and some of those did not stay more than 5 or 6 months. So the only way to keep making money was to keep buying leads and keep calling them. It was a lot of work for the small amount of money I was making. In fact I was earning far less per hour at MLM than I was building websites. Something had to change, so I started researching on the internet for a new MLM with a new business model. Unfortunately all I found was the same business model applied to internet based MLMs, but it seemed like a good idea to market to more people via the internet. So I made the switch and I made money using the same techniques that I used before. I purchased leads, I cold called them and the only thing new was they had a website they could go to and check out the business. Low and behold I had the exact same success rates with this MLM. Not surprising because I was using the same tactics. Even when I changed to start using e-mail leads and an auto-responder I was getting the same results, just a little more money back than what I was spending.
It was at this time that I had a small confrontation with my up-line. I discovered that the leads I had been buying for over a year were actually coming from my up-line, who seemed to be keeping the better leads for him. This was when I decided that I should be able to capture my own leads using the internet. I purchased several domain names, set up web pages to use as capture pages and purchased traffic to my sites via advertising. To my amazement this did not work out very well at all. I discovered that I knew absolutely nothing about marketing. All I had accomplished was that now I was spending the same amount of money for leads as I had before, except my leads were not converting into my MLM opportunity. In fact I was getting many nasty emails from my leads about spam and threats to sue. So I swallowed my pride, ate some crow and called my up-line about buying leads from him once again. This is where my foray into online MLM’s ended, because when I finally got my up-line to answer my calls he informed me that he was “moving his entire organization to a new pre-launch MLM, and I was not invited to come with him.” The majority of my up-line and down-line soon disappeared into the internet sunset and I closed down my online business a few thousand dollars poorer than I had started.
Since that time I have kept up with my research into online business opportunities and the new methods of marketing them. I discovered that I was on the right track with my attempt to build my own lead capture system that I could market my business opportunities to, I was just woefully inadequate at marketing and generating traffic to my system. I have began playing around with several of the new systems being offered these days, and in the future I plan to give a full report into which ones actually live up to their hype and which ones fall short. So if you would like to learn from my mistakes and my marketing adventures for free, just start following this blog.
Also I am asking that anyone who has free information about what works and what does not to please add it to this blog site. Share with us all that you know and have learned in your online business adventures.
My original challenge still goes out to all Marketing Gurus to put your money where your mouth is and prove that your system works. Contact me at nick@nickaadams.com
Nick A Adams
http://www.nickaadams.com
This is the point where I started to investigate Multi-Level Marketing using the internet. I studied several different opportunities and found them all to be relatively the same as far as concept, principle, and compensation. So I joined one and followed all of the training and advice I was given. I participated on all the phone calls, I made my lists, I wrote out my goals. I purchased leads and cold called them all. This was how it was done in the 90’s. I met with moderate success and within a few months I was earning more than I was spending. I was adding 10 to 15 new distributers a month into my down-line. The problem was that out of those 10-15 a month, only one or two were sticking around more than a couple of months, and some of those did not stay more than 5 or 6 months. So the only way to keep making money was to keep buying leads and keep calling them. It was a lot of work for the small amount of money I was making. In fact I was earning far less per hour at MLM than I was building websites. Something had to change, so I started researching on the internet for a new MLM with a new business model. Unfortunately all I found was the same business model applied to internet based MLMs, but it seemed like a good idea to market to more people via the internet. So I made the switch and I made money using the same techniques that I used before. I purchased leads, I cold called them and the only thing new was they had a website they could go to and check out the business. Low and behold I had the exact same success rates with this MLM. Not surprising because I was using the same tactics. Even when I changed to start using e-mail leads and an auto-responder I was getting the same results, just a little more money back than what I was spending.
It was at this time that I had a small confrontation with my up-line. I discovered that the leads I had been buying for over a year were actually coming from my up-line, who seemed to be keeping the better leads for him. This was when I decided that I should be able to capture my own leads using the internet. I purchased several domain names, set up web pages to use as capture pages and purchased traffic to my sites via advertising. To my amazement this did not work out very well at all. I discovered that I knew absolutely nothing about marketing. All I had accomplished was that now I was spending the same amount of money for leads as I had before, except my leads were not converting into my MLM opportunity. In fact I was getting many nasty emails from my leads about spam and threats to sue. So I swallowed my pride, ate some crow and called my up-line about buying leads from him once again. This is where my foray into online MLM’s ended, because when I finally got my up-line to answer my calls he informed me that he was “moving his entire organization to a new pre-launch MLM, and I was not invited to come with him.” The majority of my up-line and down-line soon disappeared into the internet sunset and I closed down my online business a few thousand dollars poorer than I had started.
Since that time I have kept up with my research into online business opportunities and the new methods of marketing them. I discovered that I was on the right track with my attempt to build my own lead capture system that I could market my business opportunities to, I was just woefully inadequate at marketing and generating traffic to my system. I have began playing around with several of the new systems being offered these days, and in the future I plan to give a full report into which ones actually live up to their hype and which ones fall short. So if you would like to learn from my mistakes and my marketing adventures for free, just start following this blog.
Also I am asking that anyone who has free information about what works and what does not to please add it to this blog site. Share with us all that you know and have learned in your online business adventures.
My original challenge still goes out to all Marketing Gurus to put your money where your mouth is and prove that your system works. Contact me at nick@nickaadams.com
Nick A Adams
http://www.nickaadams.com
Monday, December 15, 2008
Network Marketing.....Just a scam?
I am a computer programmer by training and generally a computer geek by nature. Over the years I have read quite a bit about Network Marketing, MLM, Reverse Funnel Systems, etc. I have read about many people who have made a lot of money in these areas, but I have read about many more people who never made a dime, but instead lost money in these systems. So what I would like to do with this blog is to allow people who have actually made money, not potentially made money, but actually made money in these areas to share how they did it. I mean come on, if you really are making a lot of money doing this then you should have nothing to fear about telling us what does and does not work.
I am currently in discussions with several people who claim to be making serious income using their techniques. Right now I am doing my best to verify their claims and will be reporting my findings. So if any of you so called experts want to put your money where your mouth is, then feel free to email me: nick@nickaadams.com I will give an honest report on your success, and allow you to have free advertising on many of the web pages that I own.
I am also contemplating setting up some sort of contest to let our "Marketing Gurus" train one person each (whom I will choose for them) in their system and seeing who can successfully prove-by-doing what they claim.
SO lets hear from the gurus out there, and from other bloggers just what you think.
Nick A Adams
http://www.nickaadams.com
I am currently in discussions with several people who claim to be making serious income using their techniques. Right now I am doing my best to verify their claims and will be reporting my findings. So if any of you so called experts want to put your money where your mouth is, then feel free to email me: nick@nickaadams.com I will give an honest report on your success, and allow you to have free advertising on many of the web pages that I own.
I am also contemplating setting up some sort of contest to let our "Marketing Gurus" train one person each (whom I will choose for them) in their system and seeing who can successfully prove-by-doing what they claim.
SO lets hear from the gurus out there, and from other bloggers just what you think.
Nick A Adams
http://www.nickaadams.com
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