Hi, Dan Thies here – the first six minutes of this video will explain *exactly* what we’re offering this month – and then you can “listen in” to a recorded coaching call and decide for yourself.

The door is open NOW – are you coming in?

If you’re ready to get started, so are we. This offer *must* come down September 1st, and we’ll only keep it up that long if we still have seats available.

We’re closed for now – please contact us via our support site if you are interested in joining us when we reopen.

So what’s this all about?

In the first part of this series, I explained why *now* is the best time to take your marketing strategy up a notch, to capitalize on the current market conditions, and gave you a free video from our training library, showing you how simple tweaks in keyword strategy can give you better results, with less work, via the “How Many Keywords Should I Target?” video at the end of the post.

In the second part, I talked about a five-point plan for improving your online marketing strategy – and making SEO less of a drag and more of an engine for driving business growth, then we gave you another free video – from my partner Leslie Rohde, which shows you *exactly* how to pick the right keywords to work on at the right time.

And I mentioned – briefly, that we’re going to open up our Platinum mastermind coaching program again, to accept a few more members.

Now before you run for the exit, let me just say that we actually talk to every member of this program personally, so space is truly limited, and we’re looking to fill those spots up fast. When you read about what we’re offering, you’ll understand why they *will* fill up fast.

So if you’re at all interested in working with me or Leslie as your coach (actually, you get *both* of us for the same price), you want to pay close attention to this message, where I’m going to tell you exactly:

• What the SEO Braintrust’s coaching program is all about
• What it will do for you – and more importantly, how to decide if you will benefit
• Why *now* is the best time for you to join – and get $2000 worth of training as an added bonus

So, what’s this “Platinum Mastermind Coaching” thing all about?

Can I be perfectly honest with you? This is an easy decision…

By now, you either understand why taking the RIGHT actions at the right time is critical to growing your business… or you don’t. By now, you either believe that Leslie and I can help you grow your business and make more money… or you don’t. You’ve seen our free training videos, and you’re either “on board” with the way we teach this stuff, or you’re not.

So let’s skip the long blah-blah-blah pitch about why you want to work with us, and talk about how this coaching program actually works.

The most important part of the program is our weekly coaching calls – yes, we have a big library of training materials, on SEO, PPC, Analytics, Local SEO, etc. – but the biggest benefit, by far, is being able to talk with us on a regular basis, let us get to know your business, and set the right strategy for your healthy, long term growth.

Sometimes, we’ll refer you to videos or PDFs in our training library, to help you carry out the strategy we’ve talked about. Other times, we’ll come up with specifically tailored strategies and tactics, and you’ll be able to review that any time you want by downloading the recordings of our coaching calls.

Your coaching calls take place every Thursday, and everyone’s invited to attend. Callers take turns asking questions, and we stick with it until we’ve gotten to everyone. Often times, this means that we spend 20-30 minutes with one individual, others just need a quick answer.

The important thing is that we are there for you – at a cost *far* below what you’d pay us for hourly consultations.

If you’ve got a quick question, of course, we have a private discussion forum where you can take care of that in a hurry (I spend a lot of time in there), and lengthy Q&A discussions on every piece of training material in our library. You’ll benefit from the knowledge and experience of your fellow members, who have all “been there” at some point and know exactly what you’re going through.

Honestly, I shouldn’t even have to “sell” this, but it’s not for everyone, and we only want to work with those who can truly benefit.

How You’ll Know That This is Right for You

If you’ve got an online business right now, and you’re ready, willing, and able to put our strategies into action, we believe that we can help you grow your business. We’ve been doing this for a long time, and we’ve got plenty of successful students and clients who wouldn’t go anywhere else for this kind of coaching.

We’ve also worked with far too many people who:

• Get bogged down in technical details or worrying about stuff they can’t control
• Are afraid to take anyone’s advice without seeking a second, third, and fourth opinion
• Find themselves constantly distracted by the “next big thing”

Look – we *all* have those weaknesses to some degree, but we can help you the most if you’re willing to commit – right here and now – to stop letting the “little stuff” get in your way, to taking a little action each week, and turning your business into the cash cow that it ought to be.

We’re going to ask you – during the time that you’re working with us – to go through a MAXIMUM of one (1) training course at a time, and work on implementing what we teach. If you can do that, then we’d love to be your coaches.

We’ve got around 60 seats open right now, and we’d like to fill them up quickly. That’s why we’re about to make you a killer deal with…

The Amazing “Holy Cow!” Bonus Offer That We Won’t Repeat!

You may have heard about my “Link Liberation” course – the one that completely changes the game in SEO, by turning the painful process of getting links into a fun (and often profitable) exercise that gets you more links without even having to ask for them.

What you might not know is that we’re completely reworking that course – adding some amazing software to make it all 100% easier – and releasing it this October (Link Liberation 2.0), at a cost of just under $2000.

Now, we like to take care of our students, so if you join our coaching program, it’s not going to cost you anywhere near that much, because we’re going to just include that entire course – and the software – as part of your monthly coaching.

That’s right – every current member of our Platinum coaching program is going to get that course, without paying an extra dime to us – and so will you, if you join us this month.

So… does it work?

Amazing Results (All That’s Missing is YOU)

Well, we think it does – and so do our students.

I’m slowly, painfully slogging through the process of generating precise data on the “typical results” experienced by our students the first two times we offered this class, and we’ll be releasing detailed proof during the launch in October. For now, I can say with confidence that it works great, when you put it to work.

Here’s some direct feedback I got on my blog earlier this year, from a happy student:

He’s not part of our “controlled study group,” but you can see here why he’s so happy – their link building has just exploded since he took the class last summer:

Here’s a similar chart from someone in the second class:

I think Al Gore would call those “hockey sticks” – class starts, and shortly after, it’s like the Industrial Revolution pumping CO2 into the air – except instead of carbon dioxide and global warming, it’s massive amounts of inbound links, and your rankings are the only thing that’s “heating up.”

The door is open NOW – are you coming in?

The cost of SEO Braintrust “Platinum Mastermind” coaching is just $297 per month – that’s likely to go up in the near future, and since the new Link Liberation course starts in October, we’re not going to be bringing in any more members for a while.

The decision is yours. If you’re ready to get started, so are we. I’m going to be mailing this offer to a whole lot more people next week (unless we sell out before then), but we wanted to give our regular readers a chance to grab these spots before we open it up to everyone.

Space Is Limited – Click Here To Sign Up Now

Are you “overwhelmed” with opportunity?

In the first part of this series, we learned:

• That online marketing can dramatically increase the size of your business, even if your business occupies an extremely small “niche” in the market.
• The #1 problem that prevents business owners from getting the growth that they need to have a healthy, sustainable business.
• Why *now* is the best time to take your marketing strategy up a notch, to capitalize on the current market conditions.
• How some simple tweaks in keyword strategy can give you better results, with less work, via the “How Many Keywords Should I Target?” video at the end of the post.

At the end of that post, I made you a promise – to return in Part 2 with a five-point plan for “getting your strategic house in order” – and I will keep that promise.

But first, there’s a “thing” that I *need* to talk about, that most internet marketing “experts” would rather not talk about at all. Not just because they don’t have an answer for this thing, but because it also plays into the whole “I just need one more course and then I’ll succeed” mentality that keeps their customers coming back.

My partner Leslie Rohde gave this “thing” a name a few years back, and we’ve been talking about it ever since.

He called it “Overwhelm.”

Overwhelm is what happens when you’re busy with the day-to-day chaos of running your business and your life, and then, as if that weren’t enough, you get an avalanche of conflicting advice and “information” heaped on top of your head.

One person tells you to use *this* tool or *that* technique, and the next person tells you it’s garbage. Everybody’s got an answer, and almost *none* of them are actually speaking from experience. This week a “blog network” is going to save you¹, next week it’s some weird “loophole” in Facebook or Twitter or Gmail or… whatever – and who knows what crazy thing it’ll be next week!

You know what I’m talking about – so tell me, how does it feel? Do you feel like you’re making progress, or is it more like “treading water?”

When all you’re getting is static, it’s time to change the channel!

Or maybe turn the TV off for a while… because the Answer to Overwhelm is Focus. Multi-tasking? Not so much. Do one thing at a time, do them in the right order, and presto-snap before you know it, you’re not treading water any more, you’re swimming circles around the competition.

So here are five simple (not always easy) steps to get your strategic house in order, and make sure you’re focusing on the right thing, right now:

(Since you’re probably here, first and foremost, because you’re interested in SEO, I’m going to tackle that first – and then get into the *real* business of online marketing. This is the *exact* same approach that we use for our private clients and the students in our SEO Braintrust coaching program.)

1. Make Analytics a Part of Your Business:
   You can’t make good decisions *about* your business until you understand what’s going on *inside* your business and on your web site. In the SEO Braintrust, we teach all of our students to get Google Analytics installed, “instrument the heck out of your site,” and start tracking all of your marketing campaigns (in spite of what you may have heard, this does *not* have to cause problems with SEO!). When you know what’s working, you can do more of it, and when you have good data, you can even fix what isn’t working.
    
2. Get Your Keyword Strategy Straight – By the Numbers:
   In the first post, I gave you a free video directly out of our online training library, showing you how badly “out of focus” most business owners are when it comes to keyword strategy. In today’s video (we’ll get to that in a minute), Leslie Rohde takes you step by step through his “Zone-Based SEO” system. When you watch the video, you’ll get it right away – it’s very simple – but it’s also very powerful. I’ll be *shocked* if you aren’t a complete convert to Leslie’s system thirty minutes from now.
    
3. Get Your On-Site SEO Done – Then Move On:
   On-site SEO, with the occasional minor shift or tweak, is pretty much a one-time job, once you know what your keyword strategy is – so stop staring at your website, turn your chair around, and look out the window. There’s a big wide world out there, and literally dozens of profitable marketing strategies that you can use to find your target audience, get traffic and make sales while the “link building” stuff mostly takes care of itself.
    
4. Focus on Testing and Conversion:
   There’s an old saying around the online marketing world: “It’s easier to double your conversion rate than to double your traffic.” Of course, we’d like to do both – and you can – but getting more money out of the traffic you’re already getting is a *huge* source of leverage for all of your marketing efforts. Simply adding an email marketing component to your strategy is often *more* than enough to double your overall conversion rate.
    
5. Open Up the “Floodgates” – One at a Time:
   By “stage five” here, you ought to be seeing increases in traffic, increases in conversion, and other goodness – but you’re now at risk of what I call the “More, More, More!” Syndrome… when you start to experience real success, it’s easy to start thinking you can do it all. Well, you can do it all, as long as *you* aren’t doing it all yourself, and *you* are intelligently directing the strategy behind it. This means we don’t start doing Adwords and Facebook and Mobile Phone advertising all at once – tackle them one at a time, make them profitable, systematize the day-to-day aspects, and then – ONLY then – tackle the next opportunity.

Okay, that’s enough mental re-programming for one day – let’s get to the *actionable* bit:

 Watch this video. Take notes. Seriously – here’s a tip for you: if Leslie Rohde is talking, you should be taking notes. So just grab a pad and a pen, write “Action Steps” at the top of the page on the left side, and write “Insights” at the top on the right side, and draw a line down the middle. One column for Action Steps – stuff you are going to DO, and another for Insights – stuff you want to think about and remember later. When you’re done watching, or if you just hate watching videos, you can download the PDF and print it out.

(In case you hadn’t guessed, yes – I’ll be back again in a couple days, to tell you about our “mastermind” coaching program, which has been going on continuously for about a year now, and your opportunity to join in the fun. I’ll also tell you the names of the blogs that I read on a daily basis to stay “up to speed” on online marketing so you can subscribe to them yourself, and announce the big, stunning, “holy cow” reason why now is the best time ever to join the SEO Braintrust.)

The Internet is BIG.

Really, really, big. So vastly, unimaginably big, that to call it “big” doesn’t really do it justice. It’s like calling a Monster Truck “big” – no, it’s not “big” – it’s freaking huge, and it can drive right over your pathetically “big” minivan, okay?

For business owners, this can be a Very Good Thing, or a Very Bad Thing.

The Good Thing? Well, in one sense, the Internet makes the whole concept of “scale” obsolete – allowing you to reach the entire world – making even weird little niche markets implausibly large, because you can find and target customers anywhere.

If even one in a MILLION people would be interested in what you’re offering, there are literally thousands of customers out there somewhere on the planet, waiting for you to give it to them.

So what’s the Bad Thing? I thought you’d never ask… the Bad Thing is that other people have already figured this out – and they’re out there right now, marketing their butts off, trying to steal YOUR customers.

They’re after your lunch money, my friend – whether your market is big or small, you have competition. Someone is going to meet the needs of all those customers out there – and if it isn’t you, then someone *else* is going to be…

• Increasing their profits
• Building lifetime relationships with customers
• Testing their offers
• Improving their conversion rates
• Increasing their profits even more
• Grabbing the top rankings on Google, Yahoo, and Bing

(and everything else you know you *should* be doing but aren’t)

The more traffic they get, the more money they make, the harder it gets to compete with them. Time is passing, and the competition is only getting stronger.

The real truth is this: if your business isn’t growing fast enough, the only question is how fast you’re going OUT of business.

So what’s the answer? If you aren’t already the “800 pound gorilla” in your marketplace, what’s holding you back?

Strategy.

Let me repeat that.

Strategy.

Well, marketing strategy anyway. The customers are out there waiting for someone to give them what they need, and all you need to do is go out and find them.

Let me rephrase that: you NEED to go out and find them before someone else does, and the more time you WASTE, the worse it will get.

Think about it – if your online business isn’t experiencing consistent double-digit growth, there are only a few possible reasons why:

• “It’s the economy.”
  Yeah, right. Guess what – the economy is putting many of your competitors out of business, because they suck at marketing. When times are tough, that’s the *best* time to take a bigger piece of the pie.
• “You’re not working hard enough.”
  Oh, please. You’re up early every day, you barely get any sleep, you’re at your computer on the weekends, and… do I need to go on? You’re putting in enough time – you just need to spend it better.
• “You’re not Taking Massive Action.”
  You know what? The next time I see anyone tell anyone else to take “massive action,” I am going to throw something. It’s not Massive action that makes the difference, it’s the Right Action – and that’s all about strategy.
• “I just need to find that one magic silver bullet…”
  Everything that you see successful businesses doing can be analyzed, modeled, and repeated… and other people have already done the Analyzing and Modeling for you. All you have to do is Repeat – so repeat after me…

There. Is. No. Magic. Silver. Bullet.

However, there is a way.

There is a Plan you can follow, that will get you where you want to go. It’s not the only plan, but it’s a darned good one, and if you’ll just work the plan you *can* make a big difference in your business in a hurry.

I’ll be back in a couple days, with a simple five-point plan for getting your strategic “house” in order. You won’t want to miss it.

In the meantime, you may enjoy watching this video from one of our training webinars, on how your keyword strategy might prevent you from EVER ranking for ANYTHING – no joke:

(Watching this again reminds me of just how long Leslie and I have been talking about the importance of strategy and taking the “right action” as opposed to “massive action.” It’s catching on, slowly. You can help by repeating, ReTweeting, and telling your friends – so if you like what you see here, take a minute right now to spread the word!)

UPDATE: Part 2 is online – with another free video that goes deeper into keyword strategy. You don’t want to miss it!

Roughly speaking, the market or product you pick does make a difference in how big the business can be and how quickly it will grow, but there are so many really great markets that this is not a big limitation.

The real trick to early success is in finding a competitive advantage that you can exploit right away. You will find this in primarily one of two places: either the market or yourself.

The market will often have “holes” in it because competitors have a tendency to all do the same thing, or approach the market the same way, often because they are gauging their approaches by looking at each other. This can create an opportunity where there may be traffic sources, special offers or marketing techniques that are not in widespread use by the top competition.

As an outsider, you may actually be better qualified at finding these than people already in the market. It’s the classic case of forgetting, once you find yourself wrestling alligators, that the original mission was to drain the swamp! So by all means look at your competition, but also look at the market and you may find an approach no one else is using.

The other big source of leverage is the different skill set you can bring that existing competitors may not have. In some markets, you’ll find the competition is simply not as good at online marketing in general or in some particular specialty than is the case in other markets.

If you have the better on-line game, you can rule a market by simply doing the same thing the competition is trying to do, but do it better. This is a “frontal assault”, so you’ll have to bring either a lot better skill, a lot more cash, or both to win against entrenched competitors. If that’s too much to ask, then look for a “flanking maneuver”.

For example, for those of who sell information products, we have highly developed the skill of building a list through giving away free information and then converting the folks on that list to customers via email promotions. Could you apply those techniques in some other market to create a competitive advantage? Likely so, and this is not a common model in most markets. By taking a completely different marketing approach you essentially bypass your competitors and access the market in a different manner.

Sometimes you don’t have to get that creative. Look for the traffic sources or outlets where the big players are weakest. By getting some early success, you save a bunch of cash that you can spend on growth later and you do it generally out of sight of your real competition.

Figure out where your strengths lie and find a market where those strengths will create the greatest competitive advantage and go get it.

- Leslie