Why Integration Marketing

The internet is a noisy place. No, it’s a super noisy place but a great place just the same time. Many have referred to it as the information super highway. Truly it is. When was the last time you heard the phrase go to the library? Today you hear “just Google it!”

Knowledge is everywhere and it is up to you to stand out in this vast ocean of information and get noticed. The previous chapters were designed to help you accomplish this goal so that you do not waste time and money and energy doing all the wrong things. You will make mistakes anyway, but, if this book can eliminate a few of them for you, it has done its job.

Your product, service, and marketing message must arise above all the noise on the web if you are going to connect with your ideal client and your ideal integration marketing partner. Picture yourself standing in a crowd of 1,000 people. All are waiving red flags. What can you do to stand out? Your answer is correct, waive a white flag!

Differentiate yourself from the rest of the marketers online. The process is relatively simple.

• Build a website designed to target your ideal client both in content and in appearance (most ignore appearance – big mistake!)
• Establish the framework of your site in terms of SEO
• Know the demographics of your client

• Know their pain and problems
• Market to those problems
• Provide a real solution to their problems
• Capture their name and email
• Build a relationship with them
• Format your content around their preferences for informationThe reason you want to follow this protocol is because potential IM partners will look to see if you know these things or not. If you do not know them, there’s a really good chance they will not partner with you. Practice what you preach. They cannot afford to merge with someone less in experience than themselves.

  Another thing, be mindful of the content format your IM partner uses. Are they a video person or solely a webinar type? Maybe they are podcasters and that is their thing. The idea is for you to make sure you are compliant because there may be a chance their audience is a podcast audience who don’t exactly like reading blog posts.

  Remember, this is integration marketing. The process is not all about you and your product. There is a merger happening so be careful about “standing out” too much against your partners content. Look like you belong there in every way possible. Wherever you are in their funnel, merger your content so that it looks like it is not someone else’s.

  Never draw attention away from your partner!

Go Home if You Have No Patience!

In the eighties there was a board game invented called Risk, a sort of military game which involved strategy and world domination. Simply, you started small and had to roll the dice and hopefully win big. The game required you to think about expansion and advancement.

The board layout resembled all the major countries of the world. Each country, once taken, increased the number of troops you could have which, if used properly, could help you win the game by conquering the earth. The game required patience to play because it could go on for hours as each player strategized to win.

Building a business takes time, faith, and patience. The internet needs another course, not on marketing, but on patience. You could call it patient marketing. If you cannot be patient, build patient, build partnerships with patience, based upon your business vision, then go home.

Go back and work at a job where you are guaranteed a paycheck every week or two weeks. The internet is just not for you. Post on every silly Facebook “post your business here” group you want, it will never work. Partners don’t go there to find others to connect with. These groups are spam groups with spam-minded individuals who hope, by some miracle of God, that someone will see their post and sign up or buy from them.

Go home if this is you the internet is not for you.

Rome Wasn’t Built In a Day

But, just in case the Internet is for you, let’s talk about building. Rome, which was formed in the eighth century B.C. and lasted till around 480 A.D., was not built overnight. Because it was not built overnight, we still have remnants of its history in the 21st century, how cool is that?

Will your business be around in 2000 years from now? The point is clear; build your business to last. There is too much fly by night here today and gone tomorrow marketers on the internet don’t be one of them. Profits increase with any business over time. Give yourself the time to do the right things so you can maximize your efforts.

Amazon Kindle is a perfect example of how not to build your business. Pam Hendrickson, of Make Market Launch It, once said, “If you build it they will not come. The film, Field of Dreams was great, but, it just doesn’t work in the real world.” There are countless numbers of authors that write books and post them to Amazon thinking they will be NY Times Best Sellers tomorrow.

The process does not work that way it takes time, effort, and patience. Once a person’s book is at Amazon, they have to launch the rest of the campaign because no one knows they are there. One can view the Amazon ranking for their books and see if the book has traffic and sales or not. The same holds true with your business website and all that you are offering and whether or not it is generating traffic and sales.

In previous interactions with other Amazon authors, it came to light that most authors did not have or believe they needed an online platform to be successful. The thought process these novices possessed was, upload it and they will come, only to be sorely disappointed at the results. If you joint venture with 100 hundred authors at Amazon with no platform or audience, you might sell ten or so books if they socially share consistently over a couple days.

Take the same scenario of 100 authors but apply platform and online presence to the mix and you have a different ballgame altogether. If every one of these authors had a lead list of 2000 people each, would the chances for more than ten book sales be probable? Yes, I think so too!

The problem is people are lazy and want to build Rome in a day. Instant gratification plagues society today like diseases of the past. More dreams are destroyed, best-selling novels left unnoticed all because of impatience. If I cannot get an immediate ROI, then I quit!

Great things last because great time and effort were put into their creation and execution. We have the light bulb today because someone stuck with the process until they got the crazy thing to work. We fly in airplanes because someone did more than create a machine and stare at it hoping someone would take notice.

The Spider and Social Media

In the introduction, we mentioned the spider and how she takes hold and is in king’s palaces. Have you ever heard a spider enter your house, car, or garage? No one hears a spider they look up one day and there it is. The spider is quiet and clever and everywhere.

Remember chapter three, Clever and Tactics? Social media is where you can truly implement your clever and tactical plan or strategy for your business. This is where you need to become the spider. Take hold when no one sees you doing so. Integrate yourself in areas where others will not go and are not paying attention.

Form your marketing spider web in high traffic places where you will capture leads. Spiders don’t just show up and do nothing they spin a defined web designed to do two things; navigate and capture. Have you ever studied a spider web and noticed how complex they look? What does that tell you?

The intricacy of the web tells the observer that the spider has engineered something with a purpose in mind. The end result is food captured by a product that continually serves without the spider having to do too much other than go get its food. Perhaps a crude example but for the internet it fits.

Your website is the center of your spider web on the internet. If you recall, a spider web has anchor points that are responsible for the stability of the 41| Why Integration Marketing

web. Cut them and the whole web implodes. These anchor points should be points on the internet that will bring stability and reinforcement to your overall online platform and most importantly, give you the ability to navigate back and forth to some high traffic areas.

Anchor points can be:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Linkedin
• Pinterest
• Youtube
• Your partners Integration Marketing website(s)
• Your Training sites if using a different url and serverTry to visualize standing in the center of your spider website, so to speak, and looking outward. Where do you want to spin your next strand of web? Let’s say you choose Facebook as an anchor point. Where else on Facebook are you going to spin a line of web? Visualize!

  In a spider’s web, there are many lines of web, some connecting each anchor point to one another and hundreds of others connecting everywhere in between. So, it is not one line of web from your blog to Facebook only that you are building. The anchor brings you to a new place to move around in and from.

  Once inside, you can spin your web and connect with various businesses and groups, some private and others open to join. Build a business page in 42| Why Integration Marketing addition to your profile. This will be the main anchor point on Facebook because your profile is more for personal use although a connection.

Can you see why building your own platform even before connecting with another IM partner’s is so important and why it takes patience to do so? Successful IM partnerships happen when individual businesses have strong online presence. So get spinning!

Advertising note: Ads do not spin the entire web for you.

There must be something solid the traffic can come to once your ad has done its thing. Otherwise, you wasted money. However, this brings up another strand in your web. If you chose Facebook for an anchor point, Facebook ads are a great way to generate traffic back to your Facebook business page and, ultimately, into your marketing funnel back at your website.

The whole purpose of the spider and the spider web was to paint a picture of how you can strategize within a particular platform. There is a small difference between the internet, the spider, and its web. The spider can build and watch the bugs come but, you can’t! You have to work those anchor points.

There are a few other forms of marketing that are popular on the internet that apply to the topic of integration marketing. We will talk of one in depth in these closing remarks.

Attraction Marketing

Attraction marketing, the process of attracting people to you based on personality, character, content, mindset, credibility, testimonials and so forth, is another powerful tactic that should come out from your main nerve center or website. See the film called, The Secret, for more about the law of attraction.

Your value needs to send out signals that attract. If your website and marketing web were made up of electrical wires, your goal would be to send electrical current out from the center to all the destination points. Attraction marketing is the air about you created by all your activity on the internet. Make it a positive one.

A negative attitude will never attract a positive IM partner. No one wants to hang around negative, pessimistic people. If you are new to the web, kindly understand that business owners flock around people that can and will feed their success. No negativity is allowed!

Your content will reflect you as a person, good or bad. Everything you do on the internet needs to have positive attraction built into it. Make all your content and the marketing message so irresistible that people have to fight hard to not connect with you, either as a customer or partner.

Attraction marketing is not fluff as some would imply. This marketing title is merely a result of the law of attraction principle which states, “We send out signals that attract the things we receive in our everyday lives, whether positive or negative.”

Godaddy is by far the master of upselling. In fact, they do it so much it irritates. Be it said, it is a great thing to do in moderation. There is a great chance that potential integration marketing partners will opt-in to your marketing funnel to check out how you do things. They will inspect your email messages and, most importantly, your call to action.

These entrepreneurs are not going to announce themselves, unless you know of them being on your list already. Pay attention to the following items in your email marketing campaigns.

• The frequency of your emails – everyday or twice a week?
• The titles of your emails – short and sweet and provocative
• The first paragraph - Does it engage and lead?
• The call to action – how many times do you lead them to open a link for more information?
• The length of the email
• Your email signature
• Do you have an upsell - these can be free which lead to something for sale later on
• How effectively do you talk about others content in a promotional manner, that is?The idea is to practice what you are going to be doing with those future partners. Don’t be as annoying as Godaddy. Keep a rule of thumb based 45| Why Integration Marketing upon the 80/20 rule. Give away eighty percent of free information and twenty percent that leads to a sale.

Integrate in your sales pages additional bonuses to the products they are purchasing. Give away some for free and others for a discount price when they buy x, y, and z product. Also, include a product on the thank you page. The rule of thumb is to never disconnect from your customer. Always keep the dialogue open.

The product on the thank you page can be free or even someone else’s. Your future integration marketing partners just might buy the things you are offering in order to feel out the effectiveness of the marketing funnel. What a great way to show them you understand the principle of integration by offering another product.

Keep everything relevant in your campaigns. In order for there to be a win- win for everyone involved things need to be relevant or else your brand could suffer. If you are marketing a video series on Twitter Domination, every product that you upsell, cross-sell, inside the email, sales page, or thank you page must be congruent to the main message, in this case, Twitter Domination.

Use every part of the process to achieve success or you will leave money on the table. Each email should be purposeful with intent not something you have to do because you have to or you will fall behind. Keep your marketing campaign alive with fresh content.

A good way to stay fresh is to sharpen your skillsets with training and live events.

Continued Education

There comes a time when you have to sharpen your skills. One way to do this is to stay active in learning new things about:

• Your target audience
• Your Blog
• Search engines and how it effects your blog
• Social Media
• Your competition
• Marketing
• Personal Development
• AdvertisingMost start by reading books from notable authors as Tony Robbins, Stephen Covey, Napolean Hill, and some others like we mentioned in earlier chapters. Another way to increase your skills is through online training courses which cover topics of interest like product creation, time management, how to launch a product, and the psychographics of your target market.

  These training programs provide a one on one experience with an expert in whatever the topic is that you are studying. Here is a list of some of the most notable online trainers in areas mentioned above.

• Tony Robbins – Time Management, Personal Development
• Amy Porterfield – Facebook Domination 48| Why Integration Marketing

• Kevin Knebl – Linkedin
• Pam Hendrickson – Porduct Creation
• Twitter – Michael Hyatt
• Video Marketing – Mike Koenigs and Maria Andros
• Youtube – Mia DaviesThere are many others, of course. This is just a small list of names to get you started in a right direction. You can search out Amazon for books on the topics of choice and get great results. A book or two a month can do wonders for your business vocabulary and excite fresh new ideas that can catapult your business to new heights.

  The best entrepreneurs are the ones that are always evolving who keep their eye peeking into the future so they can stay a step ahead of everyone else and be ready for the next change in technology which will affect their business. On to live events, perhaps the best part of keeping you fresh.

  Live events are hands down the best wa
  y to learn something new about your craft. The benefits are enormous.

• Networking
• Different leader perspectives
• Testimonials
• What works and what doesn’t
• Changes in technology
• Changes in people habits
• The atmosphere

• Integration Marketing Partnerships!
• Brand exposure
  Another benefit to live events is the fresh content one can take away from these types of events. Business can drain you like anything else. So, getting fresh ideas and inspiration for things you want to create and market is huge.With that said, don’t forget to step away from the computer, your business, the whole kit and caboodle and give yourself some R&R. The human mind and body can only take so much. One of the best things you can do to re- energize yourself for success is to get away from the desk for a good while and spend some time with the family.

  This time of rest and relaxation will allow the way you see things to clear up. Business is like art in many ways. When an artist stays close to the canvas for too long, he or she has the potential of muddying up the painting. They have to step back to make sure every element is in proportion.

  Do the same for your own sanity and the life of the business. Step away because it will help keep all the working parts of the business in their proper place. No solo business owner, company, or business partners function well when running on empty whether in mind or sleep deprivation.

  Finally, your health depends on you doing the right things to keep oyu life in balance.

Building on a Budget

If you are building on a budget, it will be important for you to focus on integrating your product or service in places where it will not break you financially. Start small and build big, remember? Offer a free product your first time around as long as the other party is not charging you for the ride into their marketing funnel.

In that free product, put an upsell which leads back to your website. There you can bring them into your funnel and potentially have the opportunity to make a sale or two. There are plenty of free things to do while starting out if that is the position you are in right now.

Financially, it is good practice to spend less than you make. Build through value, free value and attract traffic that will open up with credit card in hand. Don’t be cheap but don’t spend money until it is necessary. How the financials get handled is super important to the success of everything you do by yourself or with an IM partner.

The last thing to discuss will be the money side of your business. The sub title of this book is How to Harness the Power of Other Online Businesses, Create a Win-Win and Make More Profits! This will be awfully hard to accomplish if you do not keep your finances in order.

Beware of the excitement of making money. It would be embarrassing to find out you made nothing from all that hard work. Here are a few helpful tips from some of the best financial minds of today.

• Fill out a financial statement
• Understand your financial statement
• Don’t ignore good bookkeeping and accounting skills
• Read Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
• Read Rich Dad sequel “Cashflow Quadrant”
• Live at your level of means
• Spend less than you make
• Focus on the assets column of your financial statement
• Don’t hurt your home life if you are starting out
• Plan a spending strategy like you plan for marketing or anything else you do on the internet for your business
• One step at a time
• Be patientIf you have to wait a week to do something, then wait a week. There is no reason to hurt your purpose, plan, and vision it’s just not worth it no matter how gung-ho you are about the business. When there is family involved, communicate and never make them suffer from a decision that could be made later.

  Patience builds smart even if it isn’t fast. Becoming wealthy is much more fun when you make good decisions along the way that keep it fun. Build your partnerships with those who will assure long-term success.