Allow me to ask you a few simple questions about the golf market in your area.

• Has competition for players and members in your area become increasinglytougher in recent seasons?
• Are you SICK and TIRED of DISCOUNTS and FALLING membership FEES?
• Are you frustrated with your club’s LACK of marketing success?
• Do you find it difficult to hire, train and motivate key employees to perform above and beyond the call of duty?
• Are you secretly wondering how you’re going to drive more play, sell more memberships or book more outings this year?

Make no mistake about it… the golf industry is in for a tough time this year and probably for a year or more to come.

Now, I have just one more question…

What are you planning to do differently this season to turn your golf operation around 180 degrees and out-market, out-sell and out-manage every single competitor in your area?

If any of these questions hit home for you, then how would you like to:

• Out Market Everyone! Attract New Members and Players in Droves with Proven Marketing Strategies
• Out Sell Everyone! Boost Membership, Outing & Event Sales Instantly with Proven Sales Techniques
• Out Manage Everyone! Maximize Operational Efficiencies and Profits with Proven Management Ideas

To learn how you can accomplish all of this, check out Cunningly Clever Golf Operator.

Plus…

• Discussion Forums with other forward thinking operators moderated by our all-star panel of industry experts.
• Audio Interviews with recognized industry experts.
• Tele-Seminars on special topics.
• Industry Surveys reveal insights and practices of other operators.
• Downloadable Employee Training Manuals, professionally designed,
• position-specific Operations Manuals for every job, in every club or resort operation plus much, much more..

Click here: Cunningly Clever Golf Operator for more details.

Masterful headline writing is a highly prized skill in the copywriting world. Can it really be reduced to a formula?

While MarketingExperiments doesn’t reveal their formulas in detail (except in their paid training), I think we can figure it out from what they do disclose:

http://www.marketingexperiments.com/blog/research-topics/copywriting-research-topics/methodology-to-effective-headlines.html

In essence, the idea is to take the noun phrases and assign them low/medium/high scores for appeal, credibility, exclusivity, and clarity.

Not sure what a noun phrase is? Definition: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/noun+phrase

If we equate low with 1 point, medium with 2 points, and high with 3 points, we get the following:

• Appeal: 0-3 points
• Credibility: 0-3 points
• Exclusivity: 0-3 points
• Clarity: 0-3 points

If the sentence contains multiple noun phrases, take the averages.

The Formula

Putting this in to a formula we get:

Headline Effectiveness % = (Appeal + Credibility + Exclusivity + Clarity)/12)*100

or

HE = ((AP + CR + EX + CL)/12)*100

Applying this to this post’s headline, “Simple B2B Headline Writing System” – I only see one noun phrase (the whole headline).

• Appeal: 3 – Anyone that’s struggled with writing headlines will want to check this out.
• Credibility: 1 – There’s not much in terms of credibility building going on in this headline. It will have to lean on other factors for credibility.
• Exclusivity: 3 – While a Google search for “b2b headlline writing system” yielded over 1 million results, none of the search results in the first 3 pages offered a system- just tips.
• Clarity: 3 – No confusing jargon or terms used. Value proposition is clearly stated.

HE% = ((3 + 1 + 3 + 3)/12))*100 = 83%

The headline earns a B rating… not bad, but there’s definitely room for improvement.

One Of The All-Time Most Successful Headlines

How does this formula rate one of the most successful headlines ever created: “Do You Make These Mistakes In English?”

Noun phrases: ..You..Mistakes..English – I’m not sure if “You” qualifies as a noun phrase, but I’ll include it anyway.

You:

• Appeal – 3
• Credibility – 0
• Exclusivity – 0
• Clarity – 3

Mistakes:

• Appeal – 3
• Credibility – 0
• Exclusivity – 0
• Clarity – 3

English:

• Appeal – 3
• Credibility – 0
• Exclusivity – 0
• Clarity – 3

HE% = ((3 + 1 + 1 + 3)/12))*100 = 67%

A C- score.

What this tells me is that Appeal and Clarity should be weighted more heavily than Credibility and Exclusivity. If something’s exciting and clear, why not act on it now? We can always give the benefit of the doubt for Credibility and Exclusivity- these can be evaluated later.

A revised weighting might look like:

• Appeal: 0-6 points
• Credibility: 0-3 points
• Exclusivity: 0-3 points
• Clarity: 0-6 points

If we give the above headline full points for Appeal and Clarity we get:

HE% = ((6 + 1 + 1 +6)/18))*100 = 77%

A C+ score. Still not high enough for such a successful headline.

However, I think the process for determining the proper weights is clear: adjust the weightings until you can get most of the top performing 50 or so headlines to average at a score of at least 85%… not something I have time for right now. I’ll wait to see what MarketingExperiments has to say in their follow-up article.

Not only do marketers use more sophisticated and cutthroat tactics these days, but increasingly Google itself is abandoning its “neutrality” as a provider of relevant URLs in search engine results pages.

So, while we fight each other for SEO traffic, Google eats our lunch.

Infographic by SEO Book

I used to limit myself to just a few article directories and video sites for my content syndication- it was just too time-consuming and tedious. Not only did this limit the range of sites I submitted to, but also how often I would submit articles.

Eventually, I found several article submission services that I used regularly on a pay-as-you-go basis. However, with the advent of web 2.0, the number and types of sites you needed to contribute content to for effective article marketing and link building grew exponentially and these submission services were no longer adequate.

When SENuke arrived on the scene, it was supposed to address this problem; but, it’s learning curve is fairly steep and with a monthly subscription cost of over $120, out of reach for most Internet marketers.

Consequently, a crop of competing products sprung up- mostly inferior and poorly-supported.

Magic Submitter, however, is a true alternative to SENuke- and at nearly 50% less monthly cost than SENuke, much more affordable.

Alexandr Kruilik

Magic Submitter is the brainchild of Alexandr Kruilik, a respected Internet marketer. He also sells two other related products- Magic Article ReWriter and Magic Article Submitter. He has an active account on Twitter where you can keep up to date on his latest efforts: Alexandr Kruilik Twitter The last time I checked, he had over 6,000 posts. He isn’t one of those Internet marketers that hides from his customers.

My Experience With Magic Submitter

I’ve been using Magic Submitter for automated article and video submission for about 4 months now and am generally pleased with its performance- you can expect about a 90% success rate for articles and about a 80% success rate for videos.

Why not 100%?

Because that’s just not realistic. There’s a dance, or should I say- battle, going on between article submission software vendors and article sites (and video sites, etc.).

The article directories keep changing the names of submission fields, adding new ones or removing existing ones, moving them to new screens- all in an effort to thwart the article submission tools.

Submission protocols to various article directories can change almost weekly.

They’re doing this to combat article spammers who make extensive use of software too carry out their nefarious deeds. Unfortunately, us white-hat article marketers have to suffer the consequences.

Update Frequency

In any case, when it comes to keeping Magic Submitter up to date, Alexandr really shines. The frequent updates are automated and you’re prompted to save a backup of your database each time.

You can see some screen shots as well as a full list of over 30 updates since mid 2010 here.

Magic Submitter Update History

Their email support has always been responsive and the support forum is well maintained and active with current users.

Alexandr continues to add new services and features. You can now use Magic Submitter for:

• Video Marketing: Submit your videos to most popular video sharing sites like Youtube, Spike, Yahoo, and 121+ sites in all.
• Social Media Marketing: Submit content to Twitter and dozens of other social media sites and microblogs.
• Article Marketing: 53+ article directories and growing.
• Blog Marketing: Contribute content and get backlinks from over 70 WordPress blogs.
• Press Release Marketing: Announce company updates and newsworthy events to over twenty press release sites.
• Bookmarking: Get hundreds of backlinks with automated submission to all major bookmarking services.
• PDF Sharing: Get your whitepapers, reports, eBooks distributed using PDF sharing sites.
• Search Engine Pinging: It can take, days, weeks, or even months for a search engine to find your articles. Pinging immediately updates Google, Yahoo, and all major search engines for you.
• And more…

In addition to automatically creating user accounts for you and submitting your content for you, Magic Submitter also has some very advanced features for the power users out there. For instance, you can add your own submission sites and record their custom submission protocols for automation.

One feature that I use extensively is its ability to submit spun articles- articles modified with codes so that a new version is submitted to each article directory. This helps keep as many of your submitted articles indexed by search engines as possible.

So, if you’re interested in getting as many readers for your articles as possible, as many visits to your landing pages as possible, and you’re convinced content marketing is the way to go, then you owe it to yourself to check out Magic Submitter.

Visit Magic Submitter’s sales page for screenshots, videos, and a more in-depth explanation of features: Magic Submitter

The book contains about 290 pages. It is nicely laid out and the paper quality is top-notch.

Chris introduces Important concepts in simple, digestible terms supported by judiciously selected quotes and ample references to source materials for further study. Mind maps at the end of each chapter give a concise review of the chapter contents.

Chris’s writing style is personable and entertaining. He re-emphasizes important points throughout the book with different examples and turns of phrase. This facilitates skim reading and makes for a more relaxed read.

So, What Is New About GRASP The Solution?

Chris does not claim to have invented new problem solving techniques, but to have provided an efficient and easy-to-follow framework for using them.

The framework includes Generating, Reacting to, Analyzing, and Selecting ideas. The entire process is Proactive. Hence, “G.R.A.S.P.”

Chris explains the psychology behind the framework and why the selected techniques work best when used in the order prescribed- empowering the reader to drop, replace, or add new techniques.

In other words, the system is as organic and evolving as the problems that go in to it and the solutions that come out if it. This is as it should be. After all, you’re learning how to think, not just how to follow a system.

My favorite technique from the book is “Reverse The Challenge” where you brainstorm how to accomplish the opposite of your real goal (e.g., “how can I get more customers” becomes “how can I lose more customers?”), then reverse the solutions.

As a bonus, Chris discusses at length how to adapt brainstorming to group sessions in a way that sidesteps many common pitfalls such as “social loafing” and “evaluation apprehension.” Team leaders will find this section invaluable.

GRASP For Project Management

I like the way Chris closes the loop by bridging the gap between problem solving and solution implementation- also known as project management.

The approach he illustrates serves more as a set of guidelines than a full-fledged project management system; nevertheless, it’s better than what most people do, which is either wing it or over complicate it.

The key takeaway from this part of the book is that you don’t stop creative thinking just because the problem solving phase is complete- you can still use the techniques you learned to manage, refine, and sometimes radically change the solutions you found.

Summary

While you won’t be transformed in to a creative genius overnight after reading the book, it is comforting to know that creative problem solving is a SKILL that can be learned through study and practice.

You will realize GRASP’s full potential when you put it to consistent use like a painter’s favorite brush, a runner’s favorite shoes, or a chess expert’s favorite opening gambit.

If you’ve ever wanted to improve your creative problem solving skills or felt that your group brainstorming sessions could be more productive, GRASP The Solution is the book for you.

Dave Navarro

Apparently, he’s retiring from Internet Marketing (at least for now), and is giving all his products away for free (or whatever you choose to donate). At $197 per program, that’s nearly $2k in free training…

Get it while you can.

What’s on offer:

• Creating Products That Sell
• Building A Responsive List
• High-Conversion Sales Pages
• Mastering Your Sales Funnel
• Optimizing Your Blog For Sales
• Becoming Incredibly Productive
• Becoming A Big Player In Your Niche
• Getting Affiliates To Sell For You

You can find everything here:

http://www.thelaunchcoach.com/

Yours in success,
Gene Gerwin

This week, I spoke to four vendors of B2B and B2C opt-in email lists to get a better understanding of this growing market.

As you probably know, building your in-house list is a slow and tedious process. This is true for most B2B companies.

Traffic to your site is low to begin with and the chances of any of your marketing campaigns going viral is a million to one. You’re just not getting enough traffic to your opt-in landing page to make a big impact right away.

So, what about those email lists for sale?

You can find B2B email lists numbering in the tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands for less than $1,000. Some of them are nicely profiled too… specific titles, company demographics…

Some even claim to have phone-verified the data.

Are you already on Google, credit card in hand, looking for those vendors? Well, not so fast…

First of all, remember- just because they opted in to someone’s list, doesn’t mean they opted in to yours.

It’s critical you understand how and why they opted in to the list. If your offer or service is bone-jarringly different from what they expressed an interest in, expect spam complaints.

Second, speaking of spam…

Depending your email service provider, it may against their TOS to import purchased email lists. Better look in to that…

And, even if they do allow importing purchased lists, they may require opt-in confirmations before you can start sending. There goes at least 50% to 95% of your purchased list out the window…

Ah, but you have your own corporate mail server you say…

That mail server important to your business? Like being able to reach your clients? Other departments using that mail server at all?

How would you feel if your sender reputation got trashed? …if your mail server’s IP address ended up on blacklists? …if your delivery rate suddenly plummeted?

Would you know what to do?

Have you ever tried to get off a blacklist?

In other words, DON’T USE YOUR CORPORATE SERVER FOR PURCHASED LISTS…

You see how it’s getting tricky already?

OK. So, assuming you’ve got the server thing sorted out, did you really get that great a deal? Was your cost really $0.1 or $0.01 per email?

If I paid $100 for all the ice cream I could eat in one sitting, did I pay $0.1 for a thousand servings of ice cream, or $100 for 4 or 5 servings (my max before I pass out)?

What I’m saying is, you do not get to keep all those emails! Absolutely not!

If you keep sending to an unresponsive list, your sender score is going to be in the toilet pronto. Believe it or not, ISPs actually track this sort of thing.

This means, break out those garden shears because you’re going to be pruning big time… and FAST…

I could go on an on about the various pitfalls of using bought email lists, but I think my main point should be clear: you had better know what you’re doing…

If you know what you’re doing, well, then you’re probably laughing all the way to the bank.

http://www.imaginedailydeals.com/deal/san-francisco/house-bagels-free-bagel-offer-1

I used to lease the building next to their store for my telemarketing company. One of my favorite breakfasts was their “Everything Bagel” with lox, cream cheese, tomato, and red onion. My wife’s favorite still is their raisin bagel with strawberry cream cheese.

They also make an excellent chopped liver and onion pate.

Everything is baked and boiled (real bagels are boiled) fresh on-site. If you’ve only had supermarket-bought bagels, you owe it to yourself to try a fresh-made one. The difference is night and day.

Grab your coupon now before they run out.

Eight out of ten first-time customers find you on the Internet before visiting your storefront. If you’re not getting your fair share of web-savvy customers to find you on Google, Yahoo, or Bing, it’s time to make a change- your competitors already have.

Not convinced? Take a look at the above graph for the search term “local SEO.”

Interest in local SEO is exploding. You know the little flower shop next to you with constant foot traffic, the restaurant across the street that always seems to be full?- chances are they have full-fledged local SEO strategies in place.

What Is Local SEO?

Here’s a quick video introduction for merchants:

Search engines can interpret the nature of your search terms; and, if they see that you’re likely looking for a product or service typically served by local merchants, they will alter the content of the search results to highlight local vendors.

The majority of customers searching for local services will check only the links on the first page of the search results. So, it’s essential to get your business ranked as high as possible in the search engine results.

Doing this well for local SEO requires taking some steps above and beyond what site developers normally do for you- even if they say they’re optimizing your site for keywords.

Local SEO For Mobile

In addition, local SEO can extend to mobile applications.

If you own an iPhone or other smart phone capable of running third-party applications, you’ve probably seen some applications with “near me” capabilities. A shopper strolling down the street, using one of these local marketing applications, could potentially pull up your specially-designed-for-mobile-devices web page and view your current offers.

This will draw in new customers that might otherwise have just walked right by your store.

Local Advertising Alternatives To SEO

Local Advertising In The Yellow Pages

No one is saying you should stop. However, the trends are clear. The Yellow Pages directory that your phone company forces on you every year, is being used as kindling or going straight to the recycling bin with ever increasing frequency.

If you only have the budget for either running Yellow Page ads and they’re working for you- then stick with that. Local SEO, while the results can be fast, requires ongoing nurturing and maintenance.

Local Advertising Using Online Coupons (Couponing)

Couponing is on fire now. You need to be careful, though. Some businesses underestimated how many local customers would buy their coupons and ended up bankrupt.

Also, keep in mind it’s a short-term solution. Coupon marketing services will not run your advertising every day.

Local Advertising Using Radio/Television

Radio and television are just not financially viable for most businesses. The returns are unpredictable and you need to keep the campaigns running year round to have an effect.

Local SEO – Your Best Long-Term Solution

Even a small, ongoing local SEO campaign will pay big dividends over time. The wonderful thing about Internet marketing is that your return on investment can often exceed your expectations by far.

If you’ve ever felt:

• That you aren’t confident- your call center agents understand your product or service and might be misrepresenting your company or leaving bad impressions…
• That you should be getting more sales- if only you had more leads that were eager to hear from you…
• That even when you’re getting lots of leads- many of them are so poorly qualified that you’re spending far too much time doing your call center’s job for them…
• That even when you do close sales- your cost per lead is so high, you’re not sure continuing your telemarketing campaign is worth it…
• That you should be doing a lot better- You’ve got a great product and a thirsty market… your existing customers are thrilled… referrals are going strong… but your telemarketing campaign makes you feel like reaching for the antacids…

…then, what you’re about to read will open your eyes to a hidden dynamic that’s at play… something that can wreak havoc with your business-to-business telemarketing campaigns- despite your best efforts…

For Too Long You’ve Been Told You Had To Choose Between Good, Fast, And Cheap… You’ve Been Lied To…

…and the lie is getting bigger

You see, the virtualization of data management, project management, and communications systems has revolutionized cost structures for call centers.

The call center business has always had a cushy profit margin of anywheres from 30% to 40%. A 40% profit margin in almost any industry is fantastic.

When I had my 50-seat call center in San Francisco, rent, payroll taxes, network maintenance, janitorial services, and other expenses kept me at roughly 30% profit margin for most years.

When I took CCI virtual in 2005, it was like a monkey was lifted off my back… gone were the boatloads of administrative paperwork, gone where the operational expenses, gone where the office politics. Profit margins never looked so rosy.

Back then you could count the number of other call centers that went virtual on one hand. Every now and then I’d get calls from a supposed prospect who seemed a lot more interested in how I ran my virtual company than how I could help with their telemarketing needs.

Fast forward 6 years, and today almost all call centers have either completely or partially transitioned to virtual operations… for good reason- too increase their bottom line.

These days, a completely virtual call center can realize a profit margin of 50% to 70%.

Why This Should Matter To You

In a word, you’re being robbed.

Not only you, but work-at-home professional telemarketing agents as well.

In addition to charging you more than ever for business-to-business telemarketing, call centers have barely increased agent compensation since the 90′s, if at all.

Less compensation means less qualified or loyal agents -> means less productivity + higher costs per lead for you.

You’re paying more for less.

There’s no reason it has to be this way.

You have every reason to expect and demand top-notch quality agents , fast ramp ups, and reasonable rates from your outsourced virtual call center.

Virtual B2B call centers try to justify their outrageously high rates in many ways; but, here are the three most common you’ll hear:

The Top Three Myths Used By Virtual B2B Call Centers To Justify Their High Rates

“Good, reliable work-at-home telemarketing professionals are hard to find and won’t stick around for long”

With tens of thousands of talented, willing, and ready virtual professionals in the U.S. alone, we’re never more than a Craigslist ad away from an inbox full of applications.

With the right management processes in place, virtual agents will meet and exceed quality requirements. While virtual agents face unique challenges, they are highly motivated and often overcompensate to prove they are every bit as reliable as their in-office counterparts.

If you’re working with a call center that re-invests its increased profits in recruiting better agents and managers, you can now get the caliber of representation you always felt was needed for your business-to-business lead generation and sales.

You can have Good…

“Setting up technology infrastructure and processes for virtual telemarketing teams takes a long time and is very technically challenging”

Virtual telemarketing projects can be launched in mere weeks if not days.

Hosted CRM, communications, and project management solutions are as close to push-button IT infrastructure as you can get.

The key is simplify. Most software solutions come with so many bells and whistles, they can leave you bewildered. Eliminate everything that isn’t needed. Keep the enabled features to a bare minimum.

Find ways to reduce the number of screens your agents must open. For instance, instead of having agents enter callback dates in a separate form as To Do items, just add a Callback field to the contact record and make it searchable/sortable.

You can have Fast…

“B2B rates need to be as much as double that of B2C telemarketing”

With virtual telemarketing teams, the largest expense is labor. Office overhead is largely eliminated. Since agents are independent contractors, we can scratch off payroll taxes, paid benefits, and more. For teams of 20 agents or less, free and low-cost hosted solutions provide all the IT infrastructure we need.

Other than greed, there’s nothing keeping call center owners from sharing some of those savings with you and its virtual agents.

You can have Affordable…

So, you see, you needn’t choose between good, fast, or affordable. With virtual call centers, you can have all three- if you know what to look for…

The Secret To Keeping Them Honest- Free Report

I’ve prepared a report for you, “The Manager’s Guide To Selecting An Agile, Low-Cost, Lead-Generating, Sales-Closing Virtual Telemarketing Service.”

In it, I walk you through 5 key points that will help you identify the right virtual call center for you. In addition, I disclose the one condition of doing business, that- if you insist on it- can change your relationship from potentially adversarial to one of trust and partnership.