By now you probably know what “Target Marketing” is. It’s the process of designing your marketing for a specific group of people that would be most likely to buy what you sell.

As a simple example, if you sell products for men then you don’t need to include things that would appeal to women. But it’s much more complex than that.

The WORST thing you can do with your marketing is try to “be all things to all people.” This is what many refer to as the SHOTGUN APPROACH — you advertise and promote your business to anyone and everyone with the thinking that you’ll sell more by reaching more people.

Massive mistake.

If you truly focus your efforts (the way you communicate, your marketing style, the benefits that you stress, the stories you tell, the keywords you bid on, the places you choose to advertise, etc. etc.) towards your most ideal prospect then you stand to make the most money.

The closer you ’speak someone’s language’ (i.e. to a person’s feelings, problems, situations, etc.) the higher your conversions will be. i.e. the more sales you’ll make.

Because the problem with the shotgun approach is that your marketing becomes TOO BROAD and doesn’t ’speak’ directly to anyone (or group) in particular.

There are MANY marketers making the shotgun approach mistake. But there are probably MORE marketers (especially those marketing via the Internet) that ARE properly using target marketing as the foundation for their business BUT they are using some shotgun-type mistakes because of HOW they market online.

Here’s a great example…

How many companies online are trying to structure their web sites, content, and marketing to appeal to ALL INTERNET USERS within their target market? (Probably 95% of them.)

But here’s why this is, in my opinion, BAD MARKETING…

Internet users have different connection speeds… different screen resolutions… different computing power. Trying to structure your online marketing to appeal to ALL of these things is, ultimately, a way to LOSE MONEY.

Why?

Because in an effort to appeal to ‘everyone’ you sacrifice the ability to do a better job to a subset of those users. The best example is broadband users.

Income.com, for example, is going to be doing A TON of video. And guess what? We’re NOT going to have ‘alternate versions’ of our videos for dial-up and lower bandwidth users. In fact, we’re going in the opposite direction — our primary content is going to be aimed at users with fast connections. (Which is the majority now anyway.)

By creating our content and producing it to have the best experience for the majority of users that DO have fast connections we can do a BETTER JOB with our marketing. On the other hand, if we tried to create our content so it could still be experienced by everyone, we’d be ‘robbing’ our broadband users of a better experience — which can, ultimately, lead to higher conversions or higher revenue.

Some web designers are STILL designing web sites for 800×600 resolutions. This is silly. 75%+ have 1024 or greater screen resolutions now. Marketers can create better experiences by designing for the majority of their target audience — and in doing so make more money. Far more than the money they think they’d ‘lose’ by not catering to those users that are going to NOT get the ideal experience due to their computer and connection limitations.

In any business you’re going to have to do things that might “leave people out.” It’s just part of the process. If you want to maximize the amount of money you make in your business you’re going to HAVE TO make some tough decisions. Whether that’s not marketing to 18-24 year olds because most of your sales are coming from older folks, or with the dial-up vs. broadband example I’ve given you.

In fact, I would like to make you a CHALLENGE. I’d be willing to bet that RIGHT NOW in your business you could fine-tune your marketing to more directly target FEWER PEOPLE than you currently are. And in doing so, I’d almost guarantee that you make more money.

Always keep in mind… it’s not about the size of the audience, it’s about the rate at which people buy. Sometimes you have to focus on a smaller audience to produce more money.

Another great example of this is are companies that sell with premium prices. They are willing to ‘give up’ all of their potential buyers that won’t be able to afford (or justify) paying extremely high prices for their products. But they end up making more money because they tailor their marketing to do a better job of ’speaking’ to their target audience that WILL be most likely to buy their stuff.

So start thinking how you can at least start doing some test marketing to a smaller targeted audience. Set up a separate web site and special offers if you have to.

BONUS TIP: If you’re selling a bunch of products right now with an online store examine what products are selling the most. You’ll most likely find that 2 or 3 products account for 90% of your sales. If so, target your efforts to ONLY sell more of those 2-3 products and you’ll most likely make a lot more money than trying to appeal to people that ‘might’ want your 20-30 different products.

There’s a fantastic event happening in Orlando, Florida on September 11-13, 2008. It’s called IZEAFest.

IZEAFest is a 3-day event all about BLOGGING. Many of the top bloggers in the world will be in attendance. My good buddy, Jeremy Schoemaker, is giving the keynote address.

Unless you’ve been living in a cave, by now you realize that blogging is the current and future of publishing. Most “old school” newspapers and magazines now have digital editions of their publications (i.e. blogs) and many are transitioning to a BLOG-ONLY model and will no longer continue to print their newspaper, magazine, or trade journal — because it’s a lot more profitable as a blog-only model.

Thousands of bloggers are now making a part-time or full-time income from blogging — and this trend is only going to continue to explode. Never before has it been easier to ‘instantly’ have your own publication like a magazine or a newspaper to let your voice be heard.

EVERY COMPANY marketing themselves online needs a blog.

Want to learn more about how to make money from blogs? Want to network with some of the most successful bloggers in the world? You know, the ones that can dramatically increase your rankings with a single link pointing to one of your posts.

Then you need to attend IZEAFest.

Here’s The Best Part…

It’s DIRT CHEAP.

If you register for IZEAFest before May 14th, it’s a whopping $50. Yes, fifty bucks. If you register after May 14th, your ticket will cost $65.

Even if you pay $65 for your ticket this is an absolutely NO BRAINER. The networking opportunities alone are probably worth 1,000X+ that amount.

And since this event is taking place right down the road from my super-secret batcave headquarters, I am 90% sure that I will be able to attend so I’ll see you there! There’s a small chance I might be out of town that week but I’m trying to adjust my schedule.

Get all the info and register here.

You know Super Billy and UltraProfit2K and BloggerBarbara and SEOKungFu?

*For the record, I am just making these up. This isn’t aimed at an actual person.

Well, their days of making money online are numbered.

In the past few years, things have really evolved with Internet Marketing and one of them has to do with ONLINE IDENTITIES. You used to be able to get away with using some anonymous “username” as you communicated with others online — even for business purposes.

But that has now changed.

The most successful marketers online are ones that will build brands and a loyal following with THEIR ACTUAL NAMES. And in some rare cases, a pen name.

As ‘Social Marketing’ is becoming more a part of our marketing lives, it’s now apparent more than ever that the Old Generation of anonymous usernames isn’t going to cut it.

With the growth of Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and other forms of social marketing, users want to feel like they are communicating with ANOTHER PERSON, or even a new FRIEND. Well, giving a new friend you just met some bogus, made-up name isn’t going to exactly benefit that relationship. It would be a bit insulting, actually.

If you’re going to take the time and effort to ‘get involved’ online in discussions and other ‘conversations’ (for marketing purposes) you’re going to LOSE A LOT OF MONEY if you’re going to use something other than YOUR FULL NAME. Again, as an option you can use a pen name, but you must be consistent with it.

Want to know one of Facebook’s ’success’ secrets? The majority of their users are USING THEIR REAL NAMES.

Anonymous posting and conversations is so 1997.

Think about it… if you’re using Twitter, or even an online discussion forum, which posts and comments (especially those without a prior relationship) do you TRUST and VALUE the most?

Yep, it’s the ones from people using their full name.

Most people naturally equate anonymous communication as a COWARDLY ACT. And, no, I’m not saying that everyone that posts anonymously online is a coward. But that’s the PERCEPTION and FIRST IMPRESSION that most people have.

If you’re going to use the Internet for marketing purposes you better get over this ‘anonymous’ communication stuff quickly — because you’re only losing potential business and personal name brand recognition EVERY TIME YOU POST.

I’m a huge ‘trend watcher’ online, especially when it has to do with marketing. There’s a major EVOLUTION that’s happening now in relation to online identities and how people are effectively using the Internet to drive traffic and sales to their business…

The anonymous communicators are being IGNORED more and more. They just don’t get the attention and ‘interaction’ that they once did. It’s like most serious marketers are thinking, Well, how professional can they be if they aren’t even using a real name?

Another thing that adds to all of this is the TROLL FACTOR.

If you’ve been involved with online discussion forums then you are probably well aware of what a “troll” is. It’s a person that posts (anonymously, of course) some garbage to a thread you’re reading or even starts a junk thread just to “stir the pot” and piss people off.

Well, anonymous posters of any kind (forums, blog comments, social networks, etc.) are often being considered trolls now (even if they aren’t) because so many people are finally communicating online with their real names.

So the bottom line is this…

Do You Want To Make Maximum Money In Your Online Efforts?

Then start participating around the Internet using your FULL NAME. If you’re going to run a REAL BUSINESS that people spend money with then you should be using your FULL NAME.

For every successful marketer someone can name that uses some sort of anonymous moniker others can name 1,000 successful marketers using their full names — and this trend is just getting started.

PERSONAL BRANDS are becoming more valuable every day. Don’t wait to start building and growing the EQUITY in yours.

UPDATE:
Mellisa McJunkin made a great point in the ‘comments’ for this post. It’s very important that your ‘avatar’ or profile image also be a photo of yourself when possible. Funny pics of cats, cartoon characters, or Tom Cruise take away from your credibility — it is looked upon as “amateurish” and even untrustworthy as someone that might be hiding something.

SECOND UPDATE:
Peter raised some great points in the comment section about building a company brand instead of a personal brand that can never be sold, etc. Here is my response:

Peter,

-John Reese

Scheduled for launch in May(see the news update post) here’s the first sneak peek at the special case for Traffic Secrets 2.0.

The first version of this best-selling course shocked the Internet Marketing industry when it was released on August 17, 2004 and sold over $1,000,000 worth in less than 18 hours. It became known in the industry as the first “Million Dollar Day” by an infoproduct entrepreneur and the course went on to become one of the most popular “must have” training courses ever published.

After listening to what our customers really wanted, we designed a custom case for this course that will hold all of the components. No more ‘loose’ disc cases that can get lost. No more packaging you open with ’stuff’ that just flies everywhere. Now it can all stay in one nice container that can go on a bookshelf for easy reference.

The 2.0 version of the course is ALL NEW and contains 12 special interactive CD-Roms (our brand new learning platform; super cool stuff!) that will set a new standard for the industry and how people consume infoproducts. This new interactive learning platform was designed to help our customers consume the information faster so they can immediately put strategies into action and start seeing results right away.

The course also includes a Training Manual, Workbook, Blueprints, and some other goodies I can’t reveal just yet.

Stay tuned to the blog for more info.

By now you’ve probably heard of “transparency” and how it relates to a company’s marketing.  It can mean many things — from the open disclosure of certain policies to a public explanation of ‘why’ a company is taking a certain approach or utilizing a certain strategy.

But one area of transparency, more than any other, is what I believe is the future of all business.  It’s when a company provides a “behind the scenes” look at its culture, work environment, special events, lives of its employees and more.  It’s all about doing things that can build a lifetime BOND.

Let’s face it, we’re bombarded with marketing today.  It’s coming at us from all directions.  And TRUST is a major issue.  How can we trust one company over another?  Transparency is going to help solve this problem - at least for the companies that embrace it.

Gone are the days of marketing behind impersonal advertisements, generic campaigns, or fancy product design.  ”Customer” is a dead label.  The future of business is all about creating FANS and also FRIENDS.

As the commercial Web took off in the mid-1990s, single man or woman operations had a major advantage over ‘big’ companies — they had an easier time building relationships with their prospects and customers.  They wrote email newsletters and shared stories about their personal lives.  They shared photos of their cats.  They talked about lessons they learned from their kids.

And their businesses THRIVED because of this “better business relationship.”  People were drawn to it.  And it’s no surprise.  Would you rather give your hard-earned money to some cold, distant corporation or to someone that at least appeared to care about you enough that they took the time to tell you stories and share things with you?

As “social media” and the Internet continues to evolve, it’s getting easier and easier to share photos, videos, and stories with others.  I think it’s only a matter of time before businesses (and individuals) are going to be in deep trouble if they aren’t sharing ‘more’ like their competitors.

One way for YOU to practically guarantee that you make more money in your business is to improve the relationship with your site visitors/blog readers.  And being more transparent about your business and your own life is one way to do it.

You may have some PRIVACY concerns and it’s definitely something to think about before you start sharing anything.  I’ve been pretty much a paranoid freak during the past 10+ years of marketing online.  I rarely posted any photos of myself or anything to do with “my life” because I had privacy concerns.

But I’m slowly but surely getting over it.  I know that in order for my business to thrive I’m going to have to become more transparent.  Business today practically demands it.  (Or will very soon.)

Here’s a quick example of a young company that’s got this transparency thing down…  IZEA.  They post videos of company parties, have employee “confessionals” and tons of other ‘fun’ stuff that I’m sure their customers love to see.  Do you think this is helping build the relationship with their customers?

You better believe it.

Ted Murphy, IZEA’s Founder & CEO, is a friend of mine and he’s done an amazing job creating his company’s culture.  Check out the IZEA Blog to see some of the crazy stuff they are doing.

Now not all companies are going to go to such extremes as IZEA but they better start doing ’some’ of this transparency stuff (i.e. sharing) or they will be in trouble.  And you definitely need to consider doing more of this in your own business.

Personality Is Becoming More And More Of A Marketing Weapon In A World Of Over-Hyped, Outdated, Boring Strategy.

In my own effort to be more transparent, I’m going start sharing more “behind the scenes” stuff about my personal life and the life of my business.

If you haven’t already done so, make sure to follow me on Twitter.

I’m also starting to post more photos on my Flickr photostream.

Here are just a few of the photos I’ve just added… (you can click them to see larger versions).

YouTube has just added some new features and a new layout.

Look at the “Statistics & Info” tab under a video.

This tab will show you any ‘awards’ that video has won but more importantly will show you REFERRING SITES and how many clicks those incoming links have sent to the video.

* It currently appears to only show the top 5 referring sites.

EDIT: These stats have been available before but many marketers chose to ‘hide’ them. (Read on.)

This is extremely VALUABLE marketing information.

Now you can look at any of your competitor’s videos and see ‘where’ most of their traffic is coming from!

This is a great way to find new JV partners or content publishers in your market that would be ideal to send traffic to YOUR videos.

Users can apparently hide this information but YouTube displays it by default with the new layout. (For now.)

So GO NOW and do some valuable research into your competitors’ videos before they HIDE this referral data.

UPDATE: I meant to emphasize that it looks like ALL of these stats have been turned on by DEFAULT. A lot of this info was already there although the layout has changed. In the past this information did not appear to be turned on all videos by default — not sure if this is an error by YouTube that will be corrected soon.

From the time I sent out the first email to my newsletter list (inviting them to add me as a “Friend” on Facebook) it only took about 5 1/2 days to go from zero to hit the max friend limit of 5,000 friends. I’m not sure if that has ever happened before in the history of Facebook for one person’s account.

Keep in mind that I personally had to go and approve every request by hand — and I, personally, did all of them myself.

I plan on doing a lot of teaching from within Facebook itself (as it’s an incredibly valuable marketing tool) but as of now I can no longer add any new friends.

BUT…

I was able to set up a “Fan Page” within Facebook that is separate from my main profile. This Fan Page can have an UNLIMITED number of people connected to it. (Or so I’m told.) While the Fan Page does not have ALL the same functionality as being linked as a ‘friend’ to my main profile, it will have about 90% of it. I am going to be listing all my teachings and any videos I’m going to release via Facebook also on this Fan Page.

I have also set up a “Free Advertising” section within this Fan Page so anyone can go and promote their site; as well as they follow the rules I have listed.

If you missed out on becoming one of my 5,000 “friends” on Facebook, or even if you are one of the 5K, visit this page and click the “Become a Fan” link in the upper right area:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/John-Reese/12918602084

Then look under the NOTES section for the note that says, “Click Here To Promote Your Products & Services!”

* I’m going to encourage all of my 5K “friends” to also join this Fan Page area, and I hope to continue the “momentum” I created by making that Fan Page area HUGE. This will have tremendous networking benefits for everyone involved. So please go and join that page.

More news soon!

Yes, that’s a funny title. It just so happens to belong to a great post made by Jack Humphrey.

By the way, Jack has a KILLER blog with non-stop quality posts. I highly recommend you read it on a regular basis.

Jack is a smart cookie and has been paying close attention to what I’m up to on Facebook this week. I’m really doing my best to “shake things up.”

My Facebook account is now over 3,200 friends and growing fast. And it’s only been 3 days since I start my ’secret’ campaign. (No, I’m not revealing my evil plans just yet!)

If you haven’t yet added me as a friend on Facebook you better hurry… once I hit their 5,000 friend limit I won’t be able to add anymore people.

Once you log into Facebook you can find my profile here: http://profile.to/johnreese

See you on Facebook.

Sorry I haven’t posted to my blog much lately…

But it has been for a very good reason!

It pretty much comes down to *3* little letters…

F-L-U.

Ahh yes, the wonderful flu.

I had it… and had it BAD.

A nasty version of a flu bug has been making its ’rounds’ all over the world this year and it made sure to stop by my life.

I was sick, on and off, for about 5 WEEKS!

5 long, stinkin’ weeks. Ugh.

And each time I thought it was finally gone and I was about to return to ‘normal’ it would come back.

Evil stuff.

But I’m happy to say I’m back to 100% now.

Unfortunately, I got very little work done during all those weeks. All of my major project deadlines were missed, postponed, or rescheduled.

And I’m just ‘now’ getting back to work full-speed…

Many have been anxiously waiting for me to release “Traffic Secrets 2.0″ and I was hoping to have it out by now. But due to that lovely ‘plague’ that I caught, I still have some work left to finish the final CDs and get it into production.

It’s now looking like it will be released some time late next month.

Thanks to everyone for their patience. It will be well worth the wait.

The big Income.com site is coming along great.

Our team encountered some tech-related issues but we’ve pretty much solved them all now. We’re still doing some testing and additional development.

We’re also working on a lot of the CONTENT for the site. So thanks to my ‘downtime’ it has set us back several weeks on our schedule. Oh well, it happens…

But I’m not going to rush it.

This project is extremely important to me and I’m only going to release it when it’s 100% ready. So everyone will just have to continue being patient. And, yes, I know it’s been well over A YEAR since I originally announced that I was working on this.

I’m dying to ‘let the cat out of the bag’ (even some of it) and post “spy photo” shots or other info about what Income.com is all about, but I just can’t do it yet. I’m not yet ready to let the world see what I’ve been cooking up.

More news soon.

So just about the time I was ‘finally’ feeling better, I got a nice surprise…

Let’s just say I decided to leave the house for an entire day (after having ‘cabin fever’ for weeks) and when I came home I found something I wasn’t expecting…

My two “kids” (aka Baron & Betty my English Springer Spaniels) decided to have some fun in the family room…

They literally DESTROYED a $5,000 Italian leather sofa.

D-E-S-T-R-O-Y-E-D.

I still think they somehow called over about 200 other dogs from the neighborhood to help them in their fun because they sure did a lot of damage in a very short amount of time!

(I wonder if they were ‘plotting’ this for weeks…)

Here’s a photo of the culprits caught in the act. They thought they were being ‘cute’ as you can tell by the looks on their faces…

When I first saw the ‘wreckage’ I just stood there STUNNED.

And then, for some strange reason, I started to laugh about it and thought to myself…

“Well, at least I’m not sick anymore.”

Here’s Why You Should Definitely Visit TrafficJam.com, Bookmark It, And Visit Often…

For marketers, this is the ultimate research tool. You can monitor blogs by niche and keep up with what type of posts are getting the most interest across the Web. This will make it incredibly easy for you to know what type of blog posts you should be making to get more traffic, interest, and popularity for your own blog.

Now you’ll never run out of ideas for new blog posts!

This research data can help you identify untapped keywords and other opportunities.

You can use TrafficJam.com to find great blog posts for your niche. You can share links to these posts with your readers and they’ll appreciate it. (The nature of the blogosphere.)

You can also discover some new blogs in your niche that you never knew existed. These can turn into potential joint venture partners, or simply just another site to occasionally share some traffic and links. You’ll want to consider participating (properly, of course) on their blog comments to drive traffic to your blog.

But either way, TrafficJam.com can save you TONS of your time and constantly ’show you’ what your target market is most interested in at any given time.

TrafficJam.com is powered by the BlogRush Network. It uses some unique technology to analyze millions of blog post title impressions, average click-rates, session times, and more to come up with it’s live ‘ranking’ system.

We’re still tweaking our algorithm but it has already proven to be a fantastic “filter” to determine the most popular and interesting blog posts (by topic) from across the entire network. (Which continues to add new blogs everyday.)

This was a major piece to the BlogRush puzzle that took a lot longer to develop than originally planned. But this is yet another ‘addition’ to help BlogRush members get more free traffic to their blogs.

Some people were disappointed by the traffic results they received when testing BlogRush, and it’s completely understandable…

And as promised, we’re working hard to improve things.

TrafficJam.com is just one of many services we have planned to help our users drive more free traffic to their blogs. And we’re not done yet.

So go check out TrafficJam.com. Bookmark it and prepare to visit often to keep up with your niche. Initially we’re only going to be updating the rankings about once per day — but that will soon move towards an hourly update.

We don’t want the site to update too frequently or users will miss out on certain posts. So we’re trying to find the right balance of how often to update the rankings.

Want your posts to appear on TrafficJam.com? If you have the BlogRush widget installed on your blog it will happen automatically when any of your posts ’score’ well with TJ’s algorithm.

A big ‘key’ for scoring well, which is the same key to get traffic from BlogRush, is to learn to write powerful, yet specific blog post TITLES. Poke around TJ and notice the titles. Almost all of them are very SPECIFIC.

For example, rather than having a post say, “Today Was A Really Bad Day” it’s more effective if it says, “Why I Almost Smacked My Boss Today” or “Ever Split Your Pants At Work?” etc. etc.

Compelling, interesting, specific titles are what get people to CLICK. Not only on the BlogRush Network but across the Web in general. Write more effective blog post titles and you’ll also get more traffic from Google and the other search engines — because people will be more likely to click on your titles when they show up in the results.

I have reactivated the comments on this blog. Hopefully, everyone can ‘play nice’ this time.

Please do not post BlogRush support questions. (Thank you.) Email customersupport@blogrush.com if you need help with something.