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Archive for the ‘Credibility’ Category

Why John Reese Is Only Half Right IMO

Posted by Justin Brooke on June 19, 2008

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It’s exactly because of arguments like these that I have been changing over the whole way my business is perceived.

I agree with EVERYTHING John says in this post and he truly was the wrong target for these attacks.

However, we as Internet marketers need to appreciate the views of other people as a form of market research. Ballpark estimates say that half the Internet business world loves our “ebook seller” models and the other half hates it.

A good marketer should see that and think “Damn, half the Internet doesn’t like what I am doing. Maybe I can go see what they do like and model myself as a hybrid. So maybe I can get some leverage on that other half of the Internet.”

While I love John, Frank, Russell, Ed, Jeff, Eben, and all our other industry leaders just as much as the next guy. There are other marketers out there so big that their shadows can span across all our “gurus’ combined.

John Reese please don’t take this the wrong way…

Michael Arrington of TechCrunch.com makes over $250k per month with a BLOG and that blog has over 750,000 subscribers.

Kevin Rose of Digg.com receives over 25 million UNIQUES per month and is reported to have over 2 million registered users. Hows that for an email list!

Tom Anderson created a little website called Myspace.com and sold it for $580 million dollars to FOX. Myspace.com now has over 100 million registered users and gets paid 5 figures and more for ad campaigns from the largest companies in the world.

I could keep going with these facts for a long time. My point is that we as marketers should not be fighting this good fight but embracing it, analyzing it, and then capitalizing on it.

Who is it that is hating on us?
What is it that they don’t like?
How many of them are there?
What can I do to bring these people back?

Marketing and sales is at it’s core an “objection” search and destroy game. Then why are we as marketers not searching and destroying this “ebook sellers haters club” objections?

As you can tell I am very passionate about this as well as a good friend of mine Alejandro Reyes. We’ve been talking about this very topic for about a month now. Our websites, marketing, and characters are adapting because of it.

The result is we’re pulling in brand new partners on much higher levels then ever before. Love to talk about this more with anyone who cares…

Thanks for listening,
Justin Brooke

EDIT: This was not meant to show John Reese in any kind of a bad light. I am a raving fan of Reese’s work and certainly he is a legend in our industry. This was mainly directed at a lot of us who are still on our way up in the industry. Showing that we as an industry have the ability, and in my opinion the responsibility,  to analyze why we have a stigma in so many peoples eyes. Then take actions to correct that.

Great Big Giant Enormous List of “Get Your 800 Number”

Posted by Justin Brooke on September 5, 2007

Kall8

The easiest way to increase conversions, brand trust, and credibility is to simply have an 800 number for your business instead of your cell number or landline number. Anytime you can make yourself look like the bigger corporations in the mind of your customer you increase the likliness of a sale. You’d never call AT&T through a normal landline number, nor Apple, and it looks to me like they know what they are doing in the sales game!

I think people still have the notion that it’s expensive to set yourself up with an 800 number. However, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. It used to be expensive back in the late 90’s, but hey we have DVD’s, DSL, and satellite radio now. Technology is different nowadays and so are prices for old technology. Here’s a list of places where you can go get your own 800 number setup today…Psst, pick the one I have a banner for ;)

  • http://www.freedomvoice.com
  • http://www.ringcentral.com
  • http://www.phonepeople.com
  • http://www.instant1800.com
  • http://www.value800.com
  • http://www.tollfreemax.com
  • http://www.evoice.com

Some features you might want to look for are auto answer, recorded greetings, voicemail by email, multiple extensions, and call forwarding. These all play their part in making you appear to be a large corporation when you might still be just working out of your house.

Another great feature that you might want to look for and I’ll talk about these in upcoming blog posts are voice blasting and the ability to just have a pre-recorded sales pitch play for each caller. These two services can become great sales tools and pick up conversions that other mediums could never have touched. I recommend using either eVoice.com, Kall8.com or FreedomVoice.com to get these extra “conversion scraping” features.

Onwards and Upwards,
Justin Brooke