The Marketing Tool Kit

Exclusively for Inner Circle Members

Almost everything you need to grow your business

explosively, automatically and hands-free is right here.

Never make another sales call yourself.

Put your entire business on autopilot.

You cannot succeed in marketing or in business without the right vendors . . . because you are only as strong as the weakest link in your chain.  Nor can you succeed if you are using the wrong tools to do the job you want done.  The list of tools and vendors I list below is the end result of years of research and costly trial and error on my part.  This just might be the most valuable page on this site.  It will certainly save you a lot of time and money.

There's just no reason to try to do it all yourself.  Keep your overhead low and let the experts handle the jobs that require specialized expertise. And use the tools that will allow you to build your business bigger, faster and with minimum effort.

I will continue to add to this section as I discover more great vendors and tools that I use successfully for my own marketing campaigns and business operations . . . or that I have good reason to believe are stellar performers. 

List Building

The quality of your lists will determine the success of your direct marketing campaign. 80% of your marketing battle is getting the right lists. The best source for mailing lists for rent is the SRDS at www.SRDS.com.  This is the Holy Grail of the direct marketing industry.  You really are not serious about marketing if you are not regularly using the SRDS List Book. You should also be able to find the SRDS List Book at your local library if you'd like to save the roughly $700 you would have to pay to subscribe to SRDS.  This is the single most valuable resource for anyone in the business of direct marketing . . . or, frankly, for just about anyone in business. Listen to my teleseminar titled "How to Get a Product that is 100% Certain to Sell Like Hotcakes" to find out why.

A Good List Company. Melissa Data at www.MelissaData.com is one of the nation's largest list companies.  You will want to enlist their help as you plan your next direct marketing campaign.  You should be able to find just about any list you'll need for your marketing campaign by going through Melissa Data. And they'll help you avoid making costly list mistakes.

For commissioned sales people, take a look at www.SalesGenie.com.  I have not used this particular service, but a number of Inner Circle members report very good results -- especially if you are a seller of financial services. The parent company is www.InfoUSA.com which I have used successfully for many years for my mass-mail program.

Long-time Inner Circle member and experienced marketer Hal Futhey reports good results for his B2B marketing campaigns with Harris InfoSource at http://www.harrisinfo.com/HarrisInfo/Home.aspx. Like me, Hal uses Melissa Data for his marketing campaigns to consumers.  He also reports good success using www.wholesalelists.net

Target Your Niche. Writers Market at www.WritersMarket.com  is a catalogue of thousands of specialty and niche publications (with their subscription and circulation numbers).  Many of these publications will rent their list to you for a one-time use for your mailing. And all will sell you space ads.

Data Mining. Find out who the rich people are on your customer list through data mining. The companies I use for this with great success are Target America and Wealth Engine.  The well-accepted 80/20 rule is that at least 80% of your profit will come from 20% of your customers and clients. Good data mining accelerates the process of finding where the money is on your list -- whether existing customers or prospects (key if you are selling financial services, consulting services, pricey real estate, vacations, cosmetic surgery, a recreation product or any kind of luxury or non-necessity of life).  Fish where the fish are, not in the desert.

My List Broker.  I've been using Barb Godwin for my own list work for many years. You can email her at Stratamarklists@aol.com. A good list broker (advisor) is worth her weight in gold.  List brokers are paid 20% commission.  Their commission is built into the price of the list. There might be a minimum for small orders.

Have Your Own a Website in 30 Minutes

Need a professional website ready to do business today?   Here's powerful website building tool that requires zero programming experience.  If you know how to stack blocks, you can build a professional website yourself in 30 minutes. This is easier (much easier) than figuring out Microsoft Word. What I love about SiteBuildIt is that founder and product architect Ken Evoy is a world-class marketer who understands what it takes for a small business to succeed on the Web.

Writing and Creative Services

Graphic art, website design and copywriting. At www.eLance.com you'll find plenty of affordable talent to handle all your creative, design and writing needs. You can get a beautiful, fully functional and highly professional website for $300-$500. Many of the website designers you'll find here are from India, Eastern Europe and the developing world. These people are hungry and smart.  www.craigslist.org is another place to put out bids for freelance work you need performed. This is the largest classified ad service on the Web.

Need a custom software application for your website or computer network?  You'll find the solution at www.RentACoder.com  It works just like eLance.  You describe the job you want done and put it out for bid. Even when I have not needed custom code, I've used RentACoder.com just to find me the best apps for what I am trying to achieve.  Saves tons of time on research.

Shopping Carts and Merchant Accounts

I use  www.1Shoppingcart.com as my shopping cart. This third-party hosted solution includes many marketing tools needed by eMerchants -- including email broadcasting and autoresponder service, ad tracking, customizable order forms and order buttons, affiliate tracking and easy integration with all the major merchant account and transaction gateways.  www.quickpaypro.com is another shopping cart with lots of additional marketing bells and whistles -- including affiliate tracking software, etc.  Definitely worth a look.

I use www.Authorize.net as my merchant account gateway. I'm very happy with it.

You should also have a PayPal account -- www.PayPal.com. I personally find PayPal difficult to work with. They make merchants jump through too many hoops. But you will lose sales if you don't offer a pay-through-PayPal option. Some buyers feel more comfortable and secure paying through PayPal. The advantage of PayPal is that you don't need to have another merchant account or even a shopping cart. You can be up and running taking orders right away.

Yahoo provides start-up merchants one of the easiest, cheapest solutions for getting up and running fast. Just head on over to http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com. The transaction fee is a very low 1.5%. You can have a website, a shopping cart, a merchant account, even products to sell in minutes. Another way to get started selling instantly on the Internet is with eBay Storefronts at http://pages.ebay.com/storefronts/start.html. eBay's merchant and storefront service has all the tools you need.

If your eBusiness is more advanced, www.NetSuites.com is comprehensive eCommerce solution to take a look at.

Add Voice and Video to Your Websites

Click here to add audio to your website.  Using audio in my internet marketing has increased my response rates by at least 500%.

Click here to add streaming video to your website and Internet marketing.  Using video will help turn your website into a talking sales force that can deliver your sales presentations perfectly to thousands of people, even millions of people, at the same time.

Add Graphics To Your Site

Adobe PhotoShop and PaintShop Pro are certainly essential tools for producing quality graphics.

Still, not all of us (including me) are blessed with artistic flair. But that's no problem. There's an almost unlimited supply of professional graphics (much of it free) that you can just grab off the Internet.  Here are some sites to go to for free graphics: 

www.addesigner.com (Best tool I’ve found for designing animated banners)

www.windyweb.com  (Excellent collections of graphics, clip art)

http://www.angelfire.com (Great collection of buttons and graphics for your site)

www.TemplateKingdom.com (Great website templates. Just grab one and follow it)

www.ArtToday.com (Photos and art)

www.pambytes.com (Clip art, templates, backgrounds)

www.clip-art.com (Big data base of art and graphics)

www.free-backgrounds.com (Backgrounds and borders)

www.pixelfoundry.com (Backgrounds)

http://www.bigbeautifulbackgrounds.com/page1.htm (Cosmic and abstract backgrounds)

http://buttonland.com (All kinds of buttons to use on your site)

To grab images off the Web, all you do is use the “Right Click” on your mouse and choose “Save Picture As.”  Then just follow the instructions of your Web editing software to put the images on your site.

Email Marketing

Here are the email marketing systems I use:  www.aweber.com and www.iContact.com.  Autoresponders, E-Newsletters, Database List Management.  Email is how you reach your opt-in subscribers with follow-up communications.  Overall, I like Aweber. It's cheaper and has more functionality than iContact. Aweber is the best of the low-cost email marketing services.

But the downside of Aweber is that if someone buys from you who is not already on your email list in Aweber's system, Aweber will require them to verify that they want to get emails from you before you can put these buyers on your Aweber list.  The result: 25% will not verify that they want to hear from you.  So you won't be able to communicate with 25% of your buyers (who are not already on your Aweber list).  That's very bad!!! 

iContact does not have that restriction, so that's where I put my buyers. In addition, Aweber is moving toward mandating double opt-in for all subscribers to a list.  Typically, 25-35% of people who fill out your sign-up form will not verify their subscription to hear from you.  That's not tragic because those who do not verify their subscription are generally weak leads anyway.  But you will certainly lose sales by requiring double opt-in -- not many, but some. The double opt-in requirement will also protect you from accusations that you are a spammer.  It's a good idea to have more than one email service. iContact shut me down for a day when it got a few complaints that I was spamming.  I have more than 100,000 people on my email list.  It's impossible to send out an email broadcast without some complaints coming back.  So all these services have their pros and cons.

Pass Code Protect Your Site

If you are running any kind of a subscription or membership site, you'll want to prevent non-subscribers from accessing your valuable content.  That means pass code protecting your site. I use www.AuthPro.com.

It's simple to use, very cheap (about $4.95 per month) and does the job.  I researched this extensively before settling on on AuthPro.com. I was looking for a super-simple system both for me and you.  Many of the other website protection services were too complicated and powerful for what I needed (i.e. for banks). Some cost thousands of dollars in set-up fees plus a hefty monthly fee. I'm not trying to guard Fort Knox here -- just keep the freeloaders and deadbeats out.

I looked closely at MemberGate.com, but wasn't thrilled with the $14,995.00 set-up fee for a site my size. Yes, it offers lots of cool features, but that seems a bit much.

AuthPro allows you to protect all pages on your site so freeloaders can't come through the back door; allows users to select their own pass codes and user names (or not if you prefer to handle that at your end); and integrates with leading payment gateways such as www.Authorize.net (so if a credit card is bad, the service automatically suspends or terminates; or if payment goes through for a new member or subscriber, your service automatically activates). 

You can automate much of your subscription and membership management with this tool.  It also allows you to manage your subscriptions manually if you prefer. AuthPro allows for quite a bit of customization.  It even allows you to track who is using your site.

I also like that for the $4.95 per month, there's no limit to the number of members I can have.  Some (such as Bravenet.com's pass code service) limit you to 500 subscribers or members. Can't get big that way.

If you want unlimited subscribers with MemberGate.com (more than 15,000 subscribers), the set-up fee will run you $29,995. Hey, I'm not saying I might not spring for that at some point.  But right now I'm pleased with what I'm getting for the $4.95 per month I'm paying AuthPro.

Toll-Free Phone Numbers

Add 1-800 toll-free numbers and "24-Hour  Recorded Message Hotlines" to your marketing.  This is much more than another toll-free 800 number service.  Here's a sophisticated marketing tool you probably don't know about that lets machines snag your leads and make your sales pitches for you, automatically. 

Lower-Cost Toll-Free Phone Numbers can be found at www.TollFreeMax.com

Direct Mail

Card Decks and Cooperative Mailings. This is a great way to share costs on your mailing with other merchants and businesses. Instead of your postcard costing 50 cents each if you mail it solo, you can mail your postcard in an ADVO card deck for as little as 2 cents ea.  I use this tool for lead generation and build my lists of hot prospects. Click here for more on how to use card decks and cooperative mailings.  The leading vendors in this arena are www.ADVO.com, www.MoneyMailer.com and www.ValPak.com  Of the three, I've had the most experience with ADVO . . . and always have great results.

Great mailshop for high-end direct mail.  RST Marketing is the mailshop I use for all my highly personalized, high-end, high-impact, multi-match mailings. Each package is hand-assembled and looks like its one-of-a-kind.  RST even has a room full of mostly women hand-writing the addresses that go on the carrier envelope. Others are putting the contents in FedEx and USPS Priority Mail envelopes. Others are affixing handwritten post-it notes in strategic locations in the mailing.  These are the kinds of packages you want to mail if you are trying to reach a corporate executive or if you are selling a high-end product or service. RST also has laser printers that can print handwriting fonts in blue, thus looking nearly indistinguishable from true handwriting. If you want your letter to look like a truly personal letter (not mass-produced), RST is the shop for this. (Tell owner Glen Thomas Ben Hart sent you so you can get a 10% discount on your first mailing).

Traditional High-Volume Direct Mail. The two vendors that I use most for my high-volume mail are Veritis and MailAmerica (awful website, but they do great direct mail work, mailing about 200,000,000 letters a year). MailAmerica is superb for standard envelope packages (#10s, 9"x12"s. and other standard envelopes). Veritis is an enormous company that can produce just about every format imaginable.  Veritis is best known for its in-line self-mailers -- where the entire package is printed on one sheet of paper, then sliced, folded up- and glued all kinds of ways.  What this allows for is extensive personalization at low cost . . . and odd shaped packages that stand out in the mailbox. The catch? Because of high set-up costs required by the big machines nearly the size of a football field, Veritis products are generally most cost-effective in very high-volumes (i.e. 500,000 pieces and up). However, Veritis has now introduced a low-volume product designed for small business people. This is a template product, complete with graphic design. You just upload your text, and presto your mailing can go out in a few days. The minimum run for this product is 5,000 letters (which is a tiny mailing by direct marketing standards). Veritis can also help you with copywriting, graphic art and data mining. It's a terrific company.

Database Management. Your list of hot prospects and satisfied customers is your business's most valuable asset. No matter what business you are in, you need a database to store names and keeps records of transactions.  You need to keep track of what people buy, how much the paid, and the dates of transactions. And, of course, you need their contact information. You need this information for many reasons, but one of the most important reasons is so that you can keep track of your "repeat buyers."  One of the most important concepts in marketing is "recency" and "frequency."  You want to focus special attention on your "recent" buyers and "frequent" buyers. This is the lynchpin of capitalizing on the all-important 80/20 rule in marketing: 80 percent of your net income will come from 20 percent of your customers.  These are your "recent" and "frequent" buyers.  This is how you mine the gold from your customer list.  To do this you need a good database management system. You can either design your own in-house system. If you have a large mass-mailing program, you will want to hire a professional database management company to enter data, maintain, and manage your list of customers and leads.  There are many firms that can do this for you.  Here are a few:  www.kayesmith.com, www.merkleinc.com, www.saturncorp.com, www.data-management.com

Publish Your Book

Good companies for short run books (under 300 copies) are www.Lulu.com and  www.OutskirtsPress.com. For good pricing and quality on longer runs try Signature Books in Maryland (this is the printer I use).  I've found them a joy to work with. When they messed up the printing on one of my books (pages out of order), they reprinted it without kicking up any fuss. Writing, publishing and distributing your own book is one of the most powerful marketing strategies there is -- especially if you are a consultant, a doctor, a financial advisor, a lawyer, a realtor, a teacher, or in a profession that requires specialized expertise (which is almost every profession).  There are few better credentials than having a book you've written in print. The cost to print a book is about the same as a four-color corporate brochure, but has 1,000 times more impact on your potential client. "I think I'll use the plastic surgeon who wrote the book on breast implant procedures" is the thought you trigger with your book.

Get Your Book in Stores Nationwide, on Amazon, and on B&N

The two biggest wholesale book distributors are Baker and Taylor and Ingram Publisher Services. 

They will carry just about any book if you present it to them.  Once your book is carried there, Amazon and Barnes & Noble have it. It's then up to you to use the marketing know-how you are learning here to build a prairie fire of demand for your book.  Distribution was once a problem for authors.  Not any more.

Other second-tier book (but good) distributors include . . .

Associated Publishers Group, Atlas Books, Bella Distribution, Book Clearing House, Fitzhenry & Whiteside, Consortium Book Sales, Cardinal Publishers Group, C&B Books Distribution, Greenleaf Book Group, Independent Publishers Group, Midpoint Trade Books, National Book Network, Small Press Distribution.

Some of these distributors specialize in certain kinds of books. Click on the links above to check out their websites and see which distributors are right for your book. To have your book distributed in stores and carried in libraries, you will need to get an ISBN number for each book you write.  ISBN stands for International Standard Book Number. You do that by going here: www.ISBN.org Your ISBN number appears as a barcode on the back on your book. You should also get a Library of Congress Number, also called a Cataloguing in Publication Number. This number along with a classification(s) description of the book appears on the copyright page. This further helps libraries and book dealers catalogue and categorize books. You can get this by going here: http://www.loc.gov/aba/

Telecasts and Conference Call Seminars 

This is the service I use for the Inner Circle telecasts.  I'm able to talk to up to 2,000 people at the same time as often as I want for $47 a month. I also use it as just a conventional conference call bridge line. Stop making one-on-one sales calls. Talk to hundreds, even thousands, of prospects and customers at the same time by holding a conference call seminar or telecast.

Record Phone Interviews with www.HotRecorder.com. This is great material for your website. Works for Internet-based phone services such as www.Skype.com. You should be using an Internet based phone service anyway . . . because its cheaper ($29 per month for unlimited long distance calls) and it makes you completely mobile. Plus it's nearly impossible for anyone to know from where you are calling (useful if you are trying to look to clients or employers like you are working hard, when you are in fact vacationing in the Bahamas).

Affiliate Program Management and Tracking 

Options to look at include affordable hosted third-party solutions such as www.MyAffiliateProgram.com, www.AffiliateTracking.com, www.DirectTrack.com, and www.AffiliateShop.com. If you want to install the software yourself and run it on your own server (thus avoiding monthly fees), www.AffiliateGuerilla.com and www.Groundbreak.com are good bets.  www1ShoppingCart.com (the shopping cart I use) includes affiliate tracking in its bundle of eMerchant services -- valuable because then you don't need to worry about integrating your affiliate program with your shopping cart. The big corporations use www.ComissionJunction.com, www.BeFree.com and www.LinkShare.com (their fees are steep).  I have developed my own very-simple and nearly idiot-proof affiliate tracking system (me being the idiot).  Click here for info on that.

Website Hosting and Domain Names

The hosting service I use is www.GoDaddy.com. Another popular option is www.HostMonster.com. Some say HostMonster gives your more server for your money.  But I've been happy enough with GoDaddy.

I use www.GoDaddy.com for buying domain names. I own hundreds of good dot com names for my own business and marketing purposes. GoDaddy will also help you buy a domain name that's already taken. Dot com domains are the valued real estate of the 21st Century.  A good domain name can sell for tens of thousands of dollars -- even millions of dollars.  Sex.com sold for $12 million. Beer.com sold for $7 million.  Business.com sold for $7.5 million. Diamond.com sold for $7.5 million.  Easy-to-remember domain names are especially essential for your off-line advertising -- such as when using radio to drive people to your website. Domain names are the new 1-800 numbers -- only 1,000 times more valuable. GoDaddy will contact the current domain owner to determine interest in selling; negotiate a sales price; and facilitate the transaction.  Other low cost domain name purchasing options include www.domainsinseconds.com and www.joker.com.  Click here to see a list of domain names that I own. See if you can figure out why I picked them.

Submit Your Site to Search Engines

Don't pay a company to do this.  You can do this yourself in about three minutes. To add your site to Google, go to http://www.google.com/addurl/.

To add your site to Yahoo, go to https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit.

About 90 percent of searches are conducted using Google or Yahoo or by search engines that are powered by Google or Yahoo.  But it’s just as easy to submit your site to the other search engines as well. 

Other search engines to submit your site to include: Inktomi,  MSN,  Ask.com,  Open Directory Project,   AltaVista, HotBot.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising on Google, Yahoo and the Search Engines

Google AdWords is the #1 pay-per-click program on the Internet.  This is how I generate 70% of my sales on the Internet.  Go here to get started: https://adwords.google.com/select/starter/signup/ForkAuth

I've had so much success with it that I am now spending $20,000 per month on Google AdWords.  That's because I double the money I invest here within 75 days. Yup, a 100% return on my money every 75 days.  I started out spending just $50 per week on AdWords.  But it gradually mushroomed because of the success I was having with it.  But there's a trick to it.  To learn what that is, you need to listen to my seminar on "How to Use Google AdWords To Build Your Business" in the "Internet Marketing Course" section.

Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly Overture) is the #2 pay-per-click advertising program.  I use that with great success as well.  But there are not nearly as many searches on Yahoo as Google.  So it's tough to generate really big traffic with Yahoo.  But still very good.

All the search engines have pay-per-click advertising programs. So do the Super Pages, the Yellow Pages and many of the big directories. PPC advertising is powerful and highly cost-effective because only those actually looking for your ad find your ad.  And you pay only when someone actually clicks on you ad -- meaning you only pay for those who are actually interested in hearing what you have to say.

You aren't paying to reach people who have no interest in what you are saying or selling.  In other words, this is target marketing to the nth degree.

Find Your Ideal Niche on the Web by

Tracking Keywords . . . and Your Competition

Searches on the Internet are performed by people typing keywords and phrases into the search engine.

You need to have the right keywords and phrases connected with your site if you are to rank high on listings for the product you are selling or the theme of your site.

Website content that is closely tied to the keywords and phrases you've chosen and that your target market is typing into their search engines (to find what you are selling) is the foundation of your entire Internet marketing strategy. This is critical for both your pay-per-click ad campaigns and for optimizing your site so that it achieves high rankings in the free (organic) search engine listings. Correct keyword selection for your site is really the lynchpin for building a profitable online business.

Yahoo's keyword selector tool is here: http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

Google's keyword research tool is here: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Google will also suggest keywords and phrases here for you to try if you type your URL here: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal.  This will help you select better keywords and phrases . . . as well as help you narrow the focus of your site or page (if too broad a range of keywords comes up in Google's list).

An excellent free keyword research tool can be found at www.GoodKeyWords.com. I use this one a lot.

WordTracker.com and KeyWordDiscovery.com  are very good subscription keyword research and tracking services that allow you to drill deeper and go beyond what Google and Yahoo's free services allow you to do.  But I think www.GoodKeyWords.com  is easier to use; it's almost as good, and it's free.

Find how how your site is doing compared to your competition by going to Alexa, which you'll find at http://www.alexa.com/search. You can find how where your site ranks by just typing your URL into the search field.  There are more than 56 MILLION websites as of this writing.  So if your site ranks in the top 560,000, that puts you in the top 1% of sites.  But that's not all that important (unless you are trying to be a broad-based media property like Yahoo). What is important is how you are doing compared to your competitors. You can check their rankings on Alexa as well. Alexa will also reveal links pointing to the site and even show visitor reviews -- all saving you untold hours of market research.

But remember, all these are just tools that assist you.  Don't follow their suggestions blindly.  A power saw is a great tool. But human skill is required to make it effective.  And poor use of it can be disastrous.

Product Fulfillment

Go to the Mailing & Fulfillment Service Association's website at www.mfsanet.org to find a company in your local area suited to the number or units you are shipping every week. One of the biggest fulfillment operations is National Fulfillment Services.   If you ship 50 units a week, that will require a different fulfillment operation. A small mom-and-pop shop in your local area will serve you best.

Order-Taking Call Centers

I have had very good success with In Service America at www.inserviceamerica.com, located not too far from me in Forest, Virginia.  They can also handle fulfillment for your program. The big order taking phone center is West Teleservices at www.West.com which employs 29,000 people. All the big-time direct marketers use them, but it's probably not suitable for small operations (high set-up charges) -- though they are very low cost if your volume of business is high. Otherwise In Service America will be better for you. Another even lower cost service is LiveOps at www.liveops.com They employ operators at home, which allows LiveOps to keep its overhead low and, therefore, its cost to you low.

If you want your call center to actually close sales for you (not just take orders), that costs substantially more. The leading call center sale closers are InPulse, Protocol Marketing and Triton Technology.  These services provide script writers, database management and sophisticated tracking. These are world-class marketers. You just sit back and watch them work their magic. Triton is paid by commission. So this eliminates your risk; but they also don't take just any project that comes along. These are the kinds of classic "Boiler Room" operations you see portrayed negatively (sometimes for good reason) by "60 Minutes." But they can be highly effective.

Ad and Media Buying Agencies

There's a reason successful corporations hire ad and media buying agencies. They are worth it.  The money they save you by knowing their business mroe than pays for their fees. They know how to negotiate the best deal and what media will bring back the best return on your investment (ROI).  Manhattan Media and Novus Media (good for your print ads). Mercury Media (TV ads). Mercury is a big direct response agency specializing in TV, but can also handle your radio and print ads. RevShare (TV ads) can be a great option because you pay based on orders that come in.  That is you, RevShare and the TV station each take a share of the profits.  This difficulty is mostl TV stations will accept this arrangement. But it can be a great way to test a TV ad for low or zero risk. Radio Direct Response (radio ads) is a leader in direct response radio ads. Marketing Architects (radio) is another leader in direct response radio advertising (a bit on the pricey side, but very good). Tony Robbins and Carlton Sheets (huge direct sellers) are among MA's stable of high-profile clients.

DVD/CD Duplication and Packaging

A great company for this is SF Video.  In quantities of 1,000 copies or more you can duplicate a CD for about 50 cents ea. and a DVD for about 75 cents ea.  They can also package CD and DVD sets for you in attractive cases for selling and ship them to your customers. Great if you are in the seminar business . . . or if you are selling or mass-producing any kind of digital media.

Look Bigger Than You Are

Within about five minutes, www.Angel.com will allow you to have a world-class customer service call center that will make you sound like a Fortune 500 Company. Another company that cheaply (starting at $9.99 per month) provides call screening, toll-free numbers, fax service, voicemail, extensions with menu prompts and more is www.RingCentral.com.  If you need a physical office sometimes, but not most of the time, take a look at www.OfficeSuitesPlus.com, www.OfficeGeneral.com, or www.HQ.com.  These services will provide you office space on demand, complete with conference rooms, internet connections, receptionist, support staff, phones, copiers, fax machines, computers and all the gadgets and gizmos you'd want in an office -- even a panoramic 20th floor view of the city you're in. Why pay for office space when you aren't using it? And why have an office only in one place?  Instead, have an office wherever you happen to be. Not only does this modus operandi make you look big, it allows you total mobility and freedom.

Find a Celebrity to Endorse Your Product

Finding the right celebrity to endorse your product can often increase response to your marketing by 100% or more. Most cost-effective is to have a well-respected celebrity who is semi-retired. For example, we were able to get a member of "The Partridge Family" to endorse a product of a client of mine for a few thousand dollars, and it's made the difference between stunning success and failure for the campaign. Very often you can sign for an entire year celebrities (movie stars, Hall-of-Fame athletes, etc.) who are not current box office superstars, but were at one time and are are still very well known and respected, for $20,000.  Good celebrity brokers include Celeb Brokers and Celebrity Endorsement Network. 

And often you can just do-it-yourself by using a directory called  Contact Any Celebrity. If I am raising money for a non-profit, I will take the thousand or so names I want on that list and write them a letter asking if they would be willing to be listed as a "Friend of [Name of Organization]."  I will write a few lines about all the great things the charity is doing.  I will mail the letter in a FedEx envelope so that it looks important. I will include an authorization form and stamped reply envelope that the celebrity can just sign and easily send back.  If just 2% of the 1,000 celebrities I write send back the authorization form giving me permission to list the celebrity as a "Friend of [Org Name]" on the letterhead and website, I then have a list of 20 celebrities I can list as friends (with photos) in direct mail solicitations, on the website and other promotional material. This will usually increase response to my mailing 50%-100% or even more.

The key to success here is to pick celebrities (usually older celebrities) who people respect and admire. Michael Jackson, Mike Tyson and Michael Vick (the three "Michaels") are well-known, but would not be good choices.  But baseball great Cal Ripkin would be good for many products because of his wholesome all-American image. You also want the celebrity endorser to fit the product -- i.e. Kirstie Alley's endorsement of the Jenny Craig weight-loss program (assuming she does not balloon out again). The endorsement needs to make sense.

Product Design, Development and Distribution

Are you an inventor? Do you have an idea for a product?  Looking for a partner to help you develop the prototype, build it, market it and distribute it globally? Then BJ Global Direct might be your ticket.  BJ Global is an integrated design, manufacturing, marketing, and distribution company specializing in developing direct response and retail products for consumers. They have developed a formula for success.

Outsource Your Business . . . and Much of Your Life

Why should Fortune 500 companies be the only ones who benefit from the amazing cost savings of "Outsourcing" their operations to India and the developing world?  You can outsource much of what you do by hiring what are called "Virtual Assistants" or "Remote Executive Assistants" in the developing world (specifically India) for a fraction of what you'd have to pay a less-skilled American to do the work.  Why India in particular?  Well, because the people of India are highly educated, speak fluent English (a former British colony), have a strong work ethic, and pay meticulous attention to detail. Two leaders of this burgeoning Virtual Assistant industry are Brickwork of India at http://www.b2kcorp.com and Your Man In India at http://yourmaninindia.com . 

Brickwork is the high-end of the Remote Executive Assistant industry, employing PhDs and experts who specialize in tasks related to business – i.e. research, accounting, “business plans in a week”, due diligence reports, legal research, financial and investment research, data processing and management, legal services, market research, invoicing, order fulfillment, financial forecasts, investigations, website development, programming – in short, most of what you might pay Accenture 50 or 100 times more to do. Don’t use Brickwork for personal errands (i.e. finding a landscaper or sending flowers to mom). Brickwork’s job is to help you look like a Fortune 500 company.  Brickwork will charge you $15 per hour and up for your Remote Executive Assistant work, depending on the level of expertise you need.

Your Man In India is great for your personal tasks and some business tasks. YMII can help you pay your bills, book reservations, locate a friend, buy and send gifts, fill out forms, evict deadbeat tenants, apply for passport, do your taxes, fix your Internet connection, hook up your cable service, find health insurance for your family, buy your car, get your visas for travel overseas, arrange a wedding for your daughter, design a website, find you a lawyer, adopt a child, do routine legal work such as getting court filings and filling out forms, find an  apartment or house house, buy and sell property, balance your checkbook, send out invoices, answer email, fulfill orders, arrange your dental work and health check-ups, keep you on your diet and exercise regime, research and manage your investments, repair your roof, find a plumber.  There’s almost no limit to what they can do. YMII will charge you $5 per hour and up for your Virtual Assistant.

For more on this, read “My Outsourced Life,” by A.J. Jacobs for Esquire magazine. You'll find this article at http://www.smartmoney.com/esquire/index.cfm?Story=20050909-outsource.

This is a funny piece.  But it's big point is a serious one about how you can revolutionize your business by doing exactly as the Fortune 500 companies have been doing for years; and that's outsourcing very cheaply 80-to-90% of your business to Virtual Assistant companies in India.  Why pay an American $25,000 or more to write a business plan for you when you can pay a Brickwork  PhD expert from India $2,000 to write a highly professional error-free business for you?

Customized Marketing Consulting

Marketing consulting with Ben by phone.  Click the link to find out how the program works. Notice that I'm putting this near the bottom of this list . . . because I'm hoping you don't need me; that you will learn how to do it yourself.  What's more valuable -- giving someone enough food to live for a day . . . or teaching that person the skills needed to make enough money (and more) to live comfortably for the rest of his life?  I say the latter. The Inner Circle program is about giving you marketing skills and knowledge that will serve you for the rest of your life -- and that will allow you successfully to tackle any marketing or business challenge. Still, personalized consulting is sometimes helpful. So this service is available on a limited basis ("limited" because I only have so many hours in a day).

Become a Marketing Superstar

13 classic marketing books you must read.  Reading these books will give you the equivalent of a Masters degree in direct marketing.