Happy New Year! It is hard to believe that the holidays are behind us already. Although with the retail sector pushing Christmas since before Halloween, I have to admit that I am a bit "Christmas-ed out". But at the same time, I am very anxious to get the new year off to a big start with a huge bang, so I wanted to touch base with you so that you can enjoy it too.

To get the new year started and continue throughout 2009, there are some things you should look at doing to keep the leads coming in. Now with that said, you probably know by now that not all leads are created equally. I would rather see 1 or 2 quality leads a month from you rather than see a LOT of leads where the majority of them are garbage.

One thing you may be wondering is how T1 and larger circuit sales are looking and predicted to be with the current semi-dismal state of today's economy. The answer is that Telarus has seen little impact! Keep in mind that T1's and larger circuits are not typically a luxury but instead are a necessary means of allowing a company to keep doing business and further expanding their business. Yes, they could save all kinds of money by throwing out all their phones too, but then they might as well just shut their doors and give up because the phones, like the higher-end circuits are not a luxury, but a necessary means of being able to effectively do business.

Please be aware that virtually NOTHING offered by ShopForT1 is designed for residential use. You need to get rid of the residential mindset. While there is money to be made in the residential market, those products are in your Commission River portfolio. T1 (and larger) circuits and Ethernet are not appropriate for residential use in 99.9% of the cases, and marketing ShopForT1 products and services to the residential market is going to result in frustration for you, as well as a very distinct lack of sales.

For your online marketing efforts, I understand that you have almost zero control over who clicks your links, nor their "lack of mental agility" to be politically correct. But there are many things you DO have control over, and if you are marketing the wrong keywords, you are going to be attractive to the wrong market, which will inevitably result in zero sales.

Let's take an example of ranking for a keyword. What the user sees:

Example 1: Click here for great pricing on T1 lines.

Example 2: Click here for great pricing on T1 lines.

Do you see the difference in those two lines? The huge and monumental difference between these two lines is the ANCHOR TEXT and that anchor text is what the search engines use to give you ranking power and link juice. In example #1, you are ranking for the keyword phrase "Click here". Is that really what you intended to rank for? I didn't think so. But in the second example, you get ranking power and link juice for the keyword phrase "T1 lines" which is what you really wanted to accomplish. Do you see the difference?

Here is what the HTML code behind those lines use. Since this is an HTML document, I will use parenthese "()" instead of angle brackets "<>" in these examples:

Example 1:

(a href="http://yoursite.com")Click here(/a) for great pricing on T1 lines.

Example 2:

Click here for great pricing on (a href="http://yoursite.com")T1 lines(/a).

Trying to rank for the keyword phrase "click here" is going to net you nothing. Nada, zip, zero, zilch. But if you do a search on Google or any other search engine, you will find a horrendous number of companies that rank well for the keyword "click here", including companies that should know better such as Adobe!

Be very aware of what keyword phrases you are trying to get ranking power and link juice for so that you can avoid this huge "beginner mistake".

How do you find out what keyword phrases to use? There are a gazillion products out there that provide this information, and many of them are quite good if you want to pay for the software, but one of the most valuable and also FREE tools for this is the Google Keyword External tool, which can be found at:

Google Keyword Tool External

There are dozens of similar programs out there, many of them also free, but since Google controls more than 70% of the search engine market by some reports, doesn't it only make sense to find out what Google thinks is important? Ya, I thought so too.

One very interesting aspect that has recently been reported in several SEO forums is a big difference in how Yahoo ranks you compared to how Google ranks you. In short, Yahoo seems to put more emphasis (read "ranking power and link juice") on anchor text that is contained WITHIN your article or paragraph/verbiage, whereas Google seems to place less emphasis on that and relies more heavily on the anchor text on your links page or links section of your site. Again, the studies seem to indicate this but obviously neither Google nor Yahoo will confirm what they use to provide ranking power, so this is just something to be aware of.

Be very cautious about what keywords and phrases you want to rank for. I would definitely NOT recommend the term "broadband". That term has been thrown around by the carriers who are pushing DSL and cable (barf, gag, spew...) to residential customers, and most residential customers are not tech-savvy enough to understand that although T1 and greater circuits are indeed "broadband" by technical definition, your SFT1 site has nothing to offer the residential customer. Even "business DSL" is typically not reliable in the long term nor applicable to the residential customer, and I won't touch it because as I have explained in previous newsletters, business DSL is not worth my time to sell nor worth your time to market. Also note that a "home office" is still residential and rarely needs or can afford a T1 line.

One of your most important assets in gaining ranking power and juice are links. Have you investigated the FREE linking package that has been made available to you? This was discussed and demoed in the SFT1 agent training call a couple of months ago and is highlighted in your Commission River back office. If you have stand-alone sites, one of the single-most powerful things you can do for your site(s) is to get inbound links to them, and this plugin allows that to happen, painlessly and seamlessly. It will even check to make sure that your link to them is still being reciprocated with their link back to you.

With linking, however, be aware that you want to keep your inbound links coming from a "good neighborhood". First and foremost, another site in the same or similar market or industry is your best bet. Beyond that, look closely at the link to see if it will help you or actually be a detriment to your ranking. For example, consider the following two requests from sites that want to do a link exchange with one of your sites:

Example #1: http://top-gambling-site.com PR4

Example #2: http://drugs-for-you-right-now.com PR5

Example #3: http://underwater-basket-weaving-made-easy.com PR2

At first glance, you might be tempted to accept all three link requests. At second glance, you might be tempted to accept link #1 and/or link #2 simply because they have a Google Page Rank (PR) of 4 and 5 respectively, and ignore link request #3.

Wrong answer! Regardless of the PR rank, link #3 is the only one from the link requests above that you should consider. Links from gambling sites, porn sites, drug sites, etc, regardless of their PR ranking, are going to hurt you more than help you at the end of the day because they originate from bad neighborhoods. I would accept link request #3 over #1 and #2 any day of the week and would DECLINE the link requests from #1 and #2 in a heartbeat.

Summary

I appreciate you and your efforts and look forward to continuing to work with those of you who are as serious about this as I am, so that we can both reach our goals. I appreciate your leads and your efforts with ShopForT1, and you need to know that I do take leads very seriously, since without QUALITY leads, neither of us make money.

Please feel free to contact me if you have questions, comments, or suggestions.

God bless,

Jon Arnold

Jon Arnold

Happy Thanksgiving!

I want to wish you and your family a happy Thanksgiving holiday and share a few notes and observations with you. With Christmas just around the corner, I find that the Thanksgiving holiday provides more time to actually be reflective without all the hustle and bustle of the Christmas season, so in case I don't get a chance to send another one of these before the end of the year, I also want to wish you and your family a very happy holiday season. There, I think that covered all the politically correct angles....

I thought I was pretty familiar with the GeoQuote system but I learned something new this week. When a residential lead comes in and I mark it as residential, an email is sent to that customer automatically with a link to your ShopForDSL site with your agent ID. It may still be worth you following up, that is a decision only you can make, although I personally believe that residential telecom offerings are not worth the time to market them, there are many other things that can be offered to the residential consumer, assuming you elect to market to that segment anyway.

Speaking of residential customers, I find it both interesting as well as distressing that so many residential leads have been coming into the system lately from many of you. Part of that is not your fault -- the residential DSL and cable providers make a lot of use of the terms "broadband" and "highspeed", which in my opinion is toeing the line of truth in advertising. Yes, DSL and cable are technically "broadband", and while "highspeed" is a relative term compared to dialup or smoke signals, it is unfortunately at least somewhat accurate. And we cannot expect every residential surfer on the face of the planet to understand or comprehend that a T1 is just not financial reality for a residential setting. When you are doing Internet marketing, some of this is part & parcel of the territory.

But there are things you can do also. Do you market or advertise your site(s) in places where residential users gather? If you are fishing for marlin or sailfish, you do not throw your line into the shallow waters where the minnows gather, and then scratch your head and wonder why all you are catching are minnows.

What kind of bait are you using? If you just throw the hook into the water with NO bait, you are only going to catch ... well ... stupid fish.

I am continually amazed at the number of leads (trash leads) that originate from RiverOffers.com. Now don't get me wrong, I have a tremendous amount of respect for what RiverOffers has to offer the residential customer, but I can virtually guarantee that the customer who finds your T1 site via riveroffers.com is not the kind of customer where your T1 site can help them at all. The link from your riveroffers site to your T1 site is there for linking purposes, and NOT because you are likely to obtain any worthwhile customer traffic from that link.

If you know that the big fish are looking for particular kinds of bait (and if you have been following my newsletters, reading in your back office, and doing your own research where I have already told you where to do that, you already know what kind of bait you should be using), how many different kinds of carp will you catch when you use jello or yogurt on your hook?

Have you even tried fishing in a barrel, where you KNOW the right fish are there? I'm talking about offline marketing, where you already know that the qualified leads you get from that are 2 to 3 times better than the leads you get from the Internet? I don't mean putting on a suit and meeting face to face with customers (gasp!), I'm talking about a US postal mail campaign, where for about $42 you can send out 100 flyers addressed to the IT Director of companies who use the bigger bandwidth. That could be the best $42 you've ever spent.

Do you have what it takes to actually talk to potential customers? Remember, if YOU enter the lead in the back office as a WARM lead where you have already talked to the customer, the system is fully aware that you have hand-entered that lead, and if it closes, your commission is DOUBLED. I'm not suggesting that you become a walking Wikipedia for telecom, but rather just talk to a customer and see if there is interest there, where you would be more than happy to have someone who CAN talk 1's and 0's all day long give him or her a call, like me. Do NOT simply let your fingers do the walking through the Yellow Pages and start entering company names & addresses, because at the end of it, that is still a cold call, but if you have already talked to the customer and they have indicated some interest in discussing telecom, wouldn't that be potentially worth your while?

Do you need help putting together a flyer for a mailing? If so, where have you gone for help? I am more than willing to help you with that.

Do you need help in determining how to bait your hook and where to throw the line? Instead of continuing to wonder, why not search out the answer, and if nothing else, contact me where I can provide suggestions until the cows come home, and beyond.

Have you implemented any of the things that I suggested in previous newsletters to increase your relevant traffic? If not, why not? Are you not convinced that they can be effective? I can virtually guarantee that those methods (and many others that I have not even shared with you yet) are indeed effective. The one sure thing that you can take to the bank is that with inaction, nothing will change, and in fact with inaction, things will go downhill from where they are today.

The companies who are interested in telecom circuit purchases are out there, guaranteed, and the market is not saturated. Even in this economy, and in many respects, even more BECAUSE of this economy, companies are needing to reduce costs. This fact gives you a tremendous leg up because you are in a position to allow them to maintain their connectivity, maintain their productivity, and still save money in the process. What more can you ask for? I have run across many customers in recent years where they have a T1 or DS3 circuit that they have simply been paying the bill for years and years, not doing any price shopping. This is the kiss of death for a business, since the CARRIER is not going to tell them that prices have dropped. One customer from a few months ago sticks in my mind -- they had a fractional T1 (384k) that they have had for about 6-7 years, and I could have QUADRUPLED their bandwidth (to a full T1) and still cut their costs in HALF. If a customer has had their circuit for more than say 2-3 years, chances are better than excellent that they can save money on it with us.

So how are you finding those customers? First you need to make them aware that they have a need. If they don't know they have a need, they are not going to be searching online in the search engines, so even the best keywords in the world are not going to help you find that customer. This is a huge point for a mailing, to have the right person open that mail, read your flyer, and suddenly start to wonder if this is a place they can save some money and appease the corporate bean-counters who are requesting budget reductions, without also being required to sacrifice bandwidth or functionality. This particular business model came out decades ago and is still extremely viable. As an example, a couple of years ago, I did not know I needed a big-screen LCD TV until I started to see the ads I got in the mail, then suddenly realized that of course I needed one of these, but without the mail and flyers, I would still be watching a smaller tube TV today. In other words, the ads CREATED the need, where prior to that, I was not burning up Google or Bing searching for deals on LCD TV's because I didn't know I needed one. :-)

Many closers are getting away from receiving leads from lead agents because the quality of those leads has seriously deteriorated in the past year and particularly in recent months. It also affects the closer's RPL score (Revenue Per Lead), where with too many uncloseable leads coming in, the closer does not receive new leads from the system. However, I used to be a Cognigen agent, am still a Commission River agent, and I still firmly believe in lead agents and the leads you are capable of producing, given some direction, and that is the purpose of these newsletters. As the saying goes, "ya gotta dance with who brung ya to the party", and I have not forgotten who brought me to the party - YOU, where I want to continue to help you get this party livened up!

Summary

I hope these newsletters are helpful to you, giving you ideas, generating some brain juice, or perhaps just providing a necessary kick in the pants. Maybe you are already more than happy with your level of income and getting more just means more headaches for you with your tax return and the IRS, in which case I salute and envy you. I know that I have not gotten a lead from many of you in more than a year, and also know that a few dozen of you will not even receive this since your email bounces every time I send an email.

There is a saying that I learned at the airport when I go out flying that says: "Never let your airplane get somewhere that your brain didn't get to about 5 minutes earlier". The words of wisdom there are that your brain needs to be at least 5 minutes ahead of the plane, and you need to be fully aware ("situational awareness") of where you are, where you are going, and how you are going to get there. Waiting until you actually get there to figure it out is your worst possible option because you may actually be headed in the wrong direction, or when you DO get there, you are going to have other duties to contend with that you need to be prepared for.

The same is true of your marketing efforts. You need to be every bit as aware of where you want to get to as well as how you are going to get there. "More money" is not a sufficient direction, any more than "up" is sufficient when I am flying. Simply submitting your web site to the search engines is not sufficient to get you where you presumably want to go, especially since you are then competing with a SEVEN FIGURE number of people taking that same very lax approach.

I appreciate you and your efforts and look forward to continuing to work with those of you who are as serious about this as I am, so that we can both reach our goals. I appreciate your leads and your efforts with Telarus, and you need to know that I do take leads very seriously, since without QUALITY leads, neither of us make money.

Please feel free to contact me if you have questions, comments, or suggestions. My best wishes for a very happy Thanksgiving!

God bless,

Jon

If you are going fishing, wouldn't you agree that your best fishing trips result from knowing what kind of fish are biting on which type of bait? Get involved with these marketing calls and find out what kind of spider food (for the Google site spiders) is best. Many of you are fishing with styrofoam lures, resulting in your net being full of carp, not a real intelligent fish, obviously. Start fishing with bait that can make the mouths of the Google spiders water in anticipation, and start seeing the results that come from using the right bait.

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