Analyzing vs Winging It

I LOVE Google Analytics.  Even if I don't understand all of it yet, there is so much great information that can be found there.  From who is viewing, how long they stay, what pages they visit, etc. there is a wealth of knowledge. 

The important part for any entrepreneur is figuring out what information they want to track, learning to understand what the data means, and deciding what to do with that information to make your site and business better.  It doesn't matter how much data you gather if you don't use it to improve your site.

The WooRank assignment was enlightening and I have A LOT to do on my site to get that ranking up.  Knowing what to work on though is so helpful. It's manageble to just go down the list and work on the first red item and then move onto the next.  It will be good to start improving my site and to see success as more traffic is driven there.

Landing Page Optimization & Basic SEO

I've done SEO in the past and have a great plugin on my site that helps me get my SEO rating high on pages and posts.  It will be a new learning curve to see how to get backlinks to my site for this product.  I will have to put in a lot of effort to learn more about them, and how to make them happen organically over time. 

I am grateful that SEO with keywords can be done quickly and effectively in the beginning to get a site ranked higher faster, but realize that links are a very important factor and will need to be learned quickly. 

Creating new content about ink and toner could be a challenge.  I will have to do some research to find articles and other informatin that is relavent to my core products.

I'm grateful for this course and the things I have learned.  There are always tips and tricks and great content that I have been able to have lots of Aha moments and add to my arsenal of knowledge.

ROI & Optimizing Ad Performance

Well, we did it!  We started our ad campaign.  It has been interesting to watch the statistic roll in.  I am surprised to see that the overwhelming majority of clicks are coming from men on mobile phones.  It tells me that I'm hitting the wrong message for the wrong type of client.  I'm looking for businesses, not individual clients, though they can definitely be a one-off sale. 

The information on the keywords that are being search is so telling and very helpful.  It will be interesting to see how the statistics change over the 18 days we are running these ads.  My numbers dropped drastically over the weekend, which makes sense to me, but I can't wait to see if it picks up on Monday. 

I am almost excited to start tweeking things to see the impact the changes have on conversions, rankings, and ratings.  Where I was once afraid, I'm now looking forward to it.

Google Analytics & Adwords Unite

I have used Google Analytics in the past on several sights and love the power of the information it provides.  Linking it to my Google Adwords account is a new concept, and it will be interesting to see how much more powerful the information will be combined.

Learning about Google Adwords' Quality Score was also new.  I am excited to see how to tweak and improve my ads.  As with anything it will be a learning curve, but I look forward to learning more about it. 

It will be fun to have our ads go live next week and to see what kind of responses we all get.  It will also be a little nerve wracking too, I imagine.  This is the fun part of business.  It will be interesting to see how quickly we can learn to make effective tweaks that make a substantial difference to our ad performances, and eventually, our bottom line. 

Google Ads

Creating Google ads can be fun to play around and play with word options, but putting it to work and allocating money to an ad on a hope and a prayer that your messge is right, can be intimidating.  Thankfully, Google does make it easy to pivot.  It's still hard to "waste" money, but knowing it won't be a lot makes it easier to pull the trigger.  As I've said before, marketing is all about testing.  The more you can test in the beginning and get your message right, the more successful you will be. 

The worst thing you can do is let it ride in the hopes that it will eventually pay off.  You have to be willing to admit when the message is wrong and try something else.  After a failure, it's hard to have faith that you can ever get it right.  That is when it is so important to keep going, keep trying, get help, etc.  I look forward to trying this out, tweaking things, and testing future ads.

Market or Die

A business lives or dies by sales.  If no one knows you're in business, you'll never make any money.  If money is King in business, then marketing is Queen.  Learning how to market your business is a must.  Learning how to save money on marketing is imperative.  Marketing is all about testing, testing, and testing.  You have to see what works.  You have to see what works better so you get the most bang for your buck. 

Marketing should not only pay for itself, but should make you a profit.  If you're just breaking even, or worse, losing money, you have to pivot.  Change the message, the picture, the wording.  Test, test, and test some more.  It's a painful process, especially if you are tight on marketing dollars.  Every test feels painful when it doesn't work.  The faster you can learn what works, the faster you can start making sales and bringing in money.

If You Build It, They Will Come

One of my favorite movies is Field of Dreams with Kevin Costner and James Earl Jones.  The famous quote, "If you build it, they will come", has become a catch phrase that has influenced all of my businees decisions for many years.

My first business was a complete and utter flop that cost me thousands of dollars that took me almost 15 years to pay off.  I truly thought that if I built it, they would come.  My business partner and I made some critical and unfortunate decisions that cost us dearly.  Our business was never able to get out from under the debt and we never figured out how to market the business successfully.

Future endeavors were more successful because of everything I learned from that disaster.  Why is it we always learn more from the mistakes than the successes?  I'm grateful for the initial failure that led to my later successes. 

I love the creative side of creating a new business - logos, websites, letterhead, etc.  It's the marketing that scares me.  I'm always afraid that they won't come.  That I didn't build it correctly.  That it won't be what I dreamed it would be. 

I am looking forward to working on the marketing side next week and to learn to make this new venture a success. 

I Could Have Had a V8!

The joys of learning things the hard way in business is that you don't usually forget the lesson.  I have had a few of those painful journeys that I can still feel the pain of 15 years later.  But I learned from them and that is what matters.

My most recent hard-knock-life lesson was that I forgot to go back to basics, simply because I use WooCommerce on my site as a payment portal.  I had it in my mind that I needed to find a WooCommerce plugin to allow for installment payments.  Even though PayPal is my credit card processor, I forgot they have valuable tools that I could still use.  It didn't even to occur to me to see what has changed over the years from the simply "buy now" button they used to offer.

I just spent $189 on a WooCommerce plugin, that I could have created for FREE on PayPal with a simple button.  My head, and checkbook, hurt right now.  I will now be checking with PayPal, before WooCommerce, for any options I want to add to my site in the future.

Show me the Money!

This week's exercise of coming up with ideas and doing the quantify and compare exercise was eye opening to me.  I honestly didn't think the one that came out on top would be the number one choice.  I expected two or three others.  I'm glad that the one I wanted to do, actually did.  It was great validation. 

The most eye opening for me was working with the keyword planner on the words I thought would work.  Boy was I wrong!  I'm going to have to spend a lot of time working through that to drive traffic to the site.  But, I've chosen a company that will be almost 100% automated, so the only time do expect to spend on it, once it is live is driving traffic.  This will be a fun learning curve for me that I have not experienced before.

To Affliate or Drop Ship, That is the Question

Once again, I learned so many new things.  Even though I preferred drop shipping at the beginning of this weeks, lesson, I did change my mind to at least start with affilate marketing.  Once they get their feet wet and master driving traffic to their site, drop shipping would be a natural transition and addition to their site.  

The key for both models is to really do their homework, compare pricing and requirements, and then choose the right products for their site.  Doing both gives them the best of both worlds, but will take time to master.  

For first time entrepreneurs, I believe in starting with one thing, deep diving and mastering, then setting up the processes that it can keep going on its own.  Once that is done, then move on to the next level, dive deep, master, set up processes and get it going on its own.  My first business, I wanted to be everything for everyone, never mastered, never was anything to anyone.  I spent a lot of time spinning my wheels and never getting traction.  

Learning is a Never Ending Adventure

I've started several businesses over the years.  Each one on my own, doing web research, and making decisions based on my own experiences and what I am passionate about.  This week, I learned a new way of deciding on starting a business - that of doing marketing research, analyzing profitability and then making a decision based on that information. 

I personally can't imagine starting a business that way.  I am a dreamer.  I am always passionate at the beginning and love the processes of creation.  But as we all know, after the fun of creation comes the real, day-to-day grind of running that business, dealing with customers and employees, dealing with financial strain, and even the stress business can add to your spouse and family.  I can't imagine having the fortitude to stick with something that I wasn't completely passionate about from the beginning.  For me, it would be too easy to say this is too hard and not worth it.  Having a dream, passion, and mission is what keeps me going through the hard times. 

It doesn't make the new way I learned about wrong.  It just showed me once again, that there are many ways to start a business and what works for some, may not work for others.