Charlie Cook's MArketing for Success Insider's Club

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How To Reach Your Goals In 2011

By Charlie Cook   |   January 4, 2011

Want to know how to make 2011 your best year ever?

At the end of the year some people indulge in making New Year’s resolutions. They promise themselves they’re going to stop digging into the cookies or ice cream before bed, go to the gym more often, get more sleep, close more sales and a whole lot of other stuff.

Have you ever done this?

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4 Ways To Get Traffic-Boosting Reciprocal Links

By Charlie Cook   |   January 3, 2011

Reciprocal linking is exactly what it sounds like – linking to someone’s website and having them link back to yours in return. Although reciprocal links don’t rank as high on search engines as one-way links, you’ll still notice an increase of traffic from having your link in various places.

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How Can You Make 2011 Your Best Year Ever?

By Charlie Cook   |   December 30, 2010

Whether 2010 was a good, bad or an indifferent year for your business, you’d like to make 2011 even better. What’s your plan?

I was about to call it quits for the day when the phone rang. It was George calling from Delaware. He told me…

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What You Need To Change In 2011

By Charlie Cook   |   December 28, 2010

I’ve got good news and bad news for you.

The bad news?

You’re probably suffering from at least one of three guaranteed success killers – procrastination, perfectionism, and lack of focus – and don’t even realize it.

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8 Local Search Links That Will Get You Traffic

By Charlie Cook   |   December 27, 2010

Here’s the good news about local search: If someone is new to your town (i.e. recently relocated or visiting, for example) they have no idea who your competitors are. The yellow pages are a thing of the past – consumers now go to the internet to find new resources in a city.  Read More »


What Should Be On Your Marketing Wish List?

By Charlie Cook   |   December 23, 2010

Imagine for a moment that Santa Claus does exist. (After all, the U.S. Postal Service collects tens of thousands of letters addressed to him each year). Pretend that he’s going to put the things you need to succeed with your business in his bag and deliver them to your door.

What would you ask him to bring? Do you know what you want and need to make your business a lasting success? Read More »


How Santa Rings In A Blizzard of Sales Every Year

By Charlie Cook   |   December 21, 2010

You gotta love Christmas, unless you’re a Grinch. Saturday, my wife and I walked across the street to our neighbors’ Christmas gathering of… a hundred and fifty plus friends.  It’s great to have an excuse to get together with friends and also to have them over, as we did on Sunday, though our dinner party was only for eight.
Speaking of good cheer…

What’s that ringing sound you hear at this time of year?

It’s the sound of cash registers ringing up the sales generated by Santa Claus. Just because he’s old, overweight, long-haired and unshaven and dresses funny, don’t overlook his success.

Santa is a top marketing expert and  you can become one too, if you follow his methods.  Read more >>


How Google Local Marketing Helped Me…

By Charlie Cook   |   December 16, 2010

It’s 1:30 in the morning and I can’t sleep. There’s this loud chewing noise coming from over my head and it’s keeping me awake.

What is it? Watch the video below. Read More »


Which Discounts Generate Profits…

By Charlie Cook   |   December 14, 2010

{!name},
When it came time to pay the bill for dinner I must admit, I felt a foolish.
There I was handing over a $10 discount coupon for a bill that was $190 but I had to admire the marketing savvy of the restaurant owner.
A few nights before, my wife had been conferring with our good friends Leslie and Will and Leslie offered to pick the restaurant and make the reservation.
Like us, Leslie is always interested in trying new places and she had a $10 coupon for Tendga, an Asian restaurant across town in Greenwich.
We knew we were taking our chances with a new restaurant but it turned out both the food and service were first rate. My only complaint was the techno music blaring from the bar.
Which brings me back to the math.
The restaurant owner spent money on a mailing to selected homes in Greenwich, CT offering $10 off. That’s right, just $10 off in a town where the average home sells for a million dollars.
The result was that he generated at least one sale of $200 and given that we’ll be back and I’m telling all my friends – just this one $10 coupon is likely to generate a couple thousand dollars in sales over the next couple of years.
Add in a few more new loyal customers the mailing generated and the simple $10 coupon more than paid for itself.
Now I know many people worry about giving discounts. After all it seems contradictory, if you want to increase your profits – giving away money doesn’t sound that smart.
And it’s true, cutting your prices dramatically isn’t the brightest move to make if you want to stay in business. That’s what General Motors did just before they filed for bankruptcy and got bailed out.
On the other hand, using discounts to generate leads, to get people in the door so you can create loyal customers who will buy from you over and over again is just plain good business. That’s what the owner of Tengda did and you should do it too.
Speaking of discounts. Want to save $10 on any MarketingForSuccess product?
Just enter “MFS-10” in the coupon code box before 12/20/10 to save yourself $10 on any order.
Go here to get started >>
(https://www.marketingforsuccess.com/store/)
Talk to you later,
Charlie
MarketingForSuccess
P.S. What’s the easiest way to get more people to your web site, or to your place of business?
Give them a reason – even one as simple as $10 discount coupon. Who knows – it could easily bring you in dozens or even hundreds of new customers and tens of thousands of new sales that you would have otherwise missed.
P.P.S. What’s the best discount strategy you’ve used to increase sales and profits?
Just go to the blog, and add your idea as a comment to this post and provide the link to your site, and get some free press for your business. Here’s the link to the blog post >>

When it came time to pay the bill for dinner I must admit, I felt a bit foolish.

There I was handing over a $10 discount coupon for a bill that was $190 but I had to admire the marketing savvy of the restaurant owner.

A few nights before, my wife had been conferring with our good friends Leslie and Will and Leslie offered to pick the restaurant and make the reservation. Read More »


14 SEO Tools That Will Get You Better Rankings

By Charlie Cook   |   December 13, 2010

Keyword Optimization
What do marketing and advertising have in common? In the land of keyword optimization, absolutely nothing! If you don’t know what words your potential clients are using to search for your service, they can’t reach you. And if they can’t reach you…well you know what happens then. Absolutely nothing! Save yourself time and money by getting keyword optimization down and prevent your other initiatives from falling flat.
The Free Dictionary
www.thefreedictionary.com
I consider this to be one of the most valuable resources out there for keyword optimization. In addition to just showing you the meaning of a word, the dictionary also shows words of the same root and thesaurus entries. Use it to approach your keywords from more than one angle.
Google Trends
www.trends.google.com
Google tends to make software that is easy to use, extremely helpful and best of all, completely free! Their Google Trends service is no exception. It analyzes Google search data and shows you how popular that search is over a period of time. and while they don’t claim to be 100% accurate, having a general idea of the popularity of your search terms will help you whittle down your SEO terms.
Google Blog
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/
Add this blog to your regular blog roll now and thank me later!. These masters of SEO clearly know a thing or two about search. Learn tips, tricks and go behind the scenes with the geniuses behind the service that has taken the world by storm.
Keyword Discovery
www.keyworddiscovery.com
This service is on the expensive side, but has some decently priced plans. If you need help with optimizing meta tags, beating out the competition or maximizing your PPC campaigns, Keyword Discovery can help.
Keyword Mutation Detector
http://adlab.msn.com/Keyword-Mutation-Detection/Default.aspx
Did you know people often misspell San Francisco as San Fransisco, San Franscisco, and even San Francsico. Don’t miss out on results because of searchers’ spelling errors. Microsoft’s Ad Lab is a helpful tool that shows you the most common misspellings for search phrases by mining actual searches so you can boost your SEO practices even further.
Keyword Research FlowChart
http://www.seobook.com/keyword-research-strategy-flowchart
Ever wonder how to determine if your SEO efforts will pay off. Use this flow chart to help navigate the SEO waters with easy to follow instructions each step of the way. Larger version and downloadable PDF available on the site.
Keyword Typo Generator
http://www.selfseo.com/keyword_typo_generator.php
Enter your keyword of choice and then enter the type of error you want to search. Wrong key? Missed Characters? Double Characters? This keyword Typo Generator has them all covered.
Meta Glossary
www.metaglossary.com/
Stop searching for your dusty physical copy of the Dictionary and start using MetaGlossary. They scour the internet to provide you with current definitions for any word you can imagine.
Ranks
www.ranks.nl
From a company with 10 years of solid SEO experience, comes a great keyword density tool. Check to see what keywords your competitors are using and use the results to boost your business. This is a great resource!
SEO Workers Analysis Tool
www.seoworkers.com/tools/analyzer.html
Don’t know the ranking potential of your web page? This tool is a great one because it provides you with keywords, all urls located in the page, keywords found in anchor tags and more! And it analyzes not only meta tags but the same places internet spiders check as well to ensure all bases are covered.
SEO Tool Set
http://www.seotoolset.com/tools/free_tools.html
Multiple useful tools in one place make this site a go-to for anything SEM. From a SEM tool bar, a server checker (that lets you know if something in your server is erroneous) and competition research, you’ll find yourself using the resources on this site regularly.
Similpedia
http://similpedia.org/
As its name suggests, this site helps you find similar content on…you guessed it – Wikpedia. Just enter a URL or paragraph of 100 words and you’re given all of the wikipedia articles that are related to that content.
Tip of My Tongue
http://chir.ag/projects/tip-of-my-tongue/
What was that word? It starts with Q and has an I in it…and an R, I think… No more guessing! Tip of My Tongue  Enter partial words, letters or meanings to get that word off the tip of your tongue and into your keyword cache.
Traffic Travis
www.traffictravis.com
Besides the fact that Traffic Travis was highly rated by CNET (4.5 stars), this program combines a bunch of useful tools: keyword and competition searches, your site’s ranking amongst the top four search engines, and a point-and-click advertisement tracker. Add all this to the fact that the layout is simple and the program is easy to use and Traffic Travis is an online marketer’s dream come true.
WordTracker
www.wordtracker.com
Has a free keyword suggestion tool. Known as the Grandfather of SEO sites, but they also have linkbuilder and strategizer tools. Perfect if you need continuous (versus sporadic) access, high level details about a niche, and a few projects at a time.

What do marketing and advertising have in common? In the land of keyword optimization, absolutely nothing! If you don’t know what words your potential clients are using to search for your service, they can’t find you. And if they can’t find you… Read More »