Join me for a Camp Checkmate preview call Thursday, 11 March 2010 at 1:00pm EST, where I'll take you through a 30-minute exercise that will give you insight into what your market wants and isn't getting. 

You'll discover how to play the Google search results page like a 1955 Gretsch Chet Atkins 6120 guitar, so that you can cut through the clutter and become the obvious choice for your market.

Full disclosure: this is a preview call for the Camp Checkmate live event coming up in Durham NC in 3 weeks, on April 1-2. Frankly, I've done a sucky job of promotion so far, so my plan is to entice you with my best stuff and then make you an offer you can't refuse. 

Click here to register for the webinar.

 Danny teaches entrepreneurship at Brown University, the only Ivy League school named after the first word of a Van Morrison song title, and he is an alum of Harvard Business School, which impresses you even if you won't admit it. 

Plus he spent a few years in brand management at Procter & Gamble.

Plus he's a serial start-up guy, lending his talents to a bunch of new ventures in publishing, natural health, engineering, and so on.

Plus plus he travels around the world teaching and consulting on entrepreneurship, from China to Egypt to Portugal to Israel to I can't even keep track of where else.

So when we got on the horn to talk about what he calls "bottom up research," I was all ears.

My Beginner Entrepreneurial Mistake

And when – this was totally unrehearsed – I mentioned an early mistake I made when I was first starting out on my own, I got Danny onto his soapbox in a big way. It starts at 4 minutes 30 seconds in the audio (below).

Danny's mild-mannered, calm, earnest demeanor vanished as he ranted about how many times he hears otherwise savvy entrepreneurs pull out this particular number – the one I had used – to justify their business plan to themselves, to partners and to investors.

 In the process, you'll discover how to conduct free research that's arguably more valuable than anything you can buy or commission. Danny shares two examples of "bottom up research" from his P&G days, showing how Tide and Dawn teams innovated based on this method of research that's available to all of us, regardless of how pinched our pennies.

Click the arrow below for a short course in entrepreneurship from one of the leading teachers in the US. Or click the blue link to download the MP3 for listening at your leisure:

Quick and Dirty Online Research – Free Webinar Thursday 11 March 2010

Join me for a Camp Checkmate preview call tomorrow at 1pm EST, where I'll take you through a 30-minute exercise that will give you insight into what your market wants and isn't getting. 

Full disclosure: this is a preview call for the Camp Checkmate live event coming up in Durham NC in 3 weeks, on April 1-2. Frankly, I've done a sucky job of promotion so far, so my plan is to entice you with my best stuff and then make you an offer you can't refuse. 

Click here to register for the webinar.

Participants will work individually and in small groups on practical strategies and techniques that will increase clicks, leads and sales, especially in very competitive markets. If you attend, you will make improvements in your AdWords campaigns during the master class, and will gain skills that will enable you to continue improving those campaigns once you return to your office.

Or for the Dutch and Flemish speaking visitors:

Tijdens de 2-daagse Master Class leert u hoe u Google AdWords zó inzet dat u met minimale advertentiebudgetten uw online campagne doelstellingen bereikt. Het intensieve programma bevat een mix van theorie en praktijk.

U gaat zelf individueel en in groepjes aan de slag met de opgedane theorieën en technieken. Tijdens de Master Class maakt u al een start met uw eigen AdWords campagne die u na afloop direct vanuit uw kantoor of huis verder kunt gebruiken en uitbouwen.

For more information, please contact Reint Jan Holterman from orange+lime marketing at adwords@orange-lime.nl or check out this page regularly for more news.

1. Perry Marshall's AdWords Elite Summit – streaming and DVDs

My friend, colleague and mentor Perry Marshall's AdWords Elite Summit in Maui is looking to be a must-attend for top AdWords players. How seriously am I taking this? Perry invited me a couple of months ago to be a speaker, and I couldn't, due to a long-standing client commitment. As soon as I could, I ordered the live streaming video and DVD set of the event. That was hard, to pay for something that was offered for free ;) But as someone who plays in the AdWords Big Leagues, I couldn't afford not to.

If you play in the AdWords Big Leagues, or aspire to, and you're not jetting to Maui next week, do yourself a favor and order the videos. Perry's kindly hooked my affiliate link up with a $100 coupon, already applied:

https://m171.infusionsoft.com/go/HJMauiDSC1/SC94217

The coupon expires on Thursday, Feb 25 (that's two days from now).

2. Camp Checkmate – Live, Durham NC, April 1-2, 2010

I'm a fairly low-key guy, but if we were in the same room I'd be shaking you by the shoulders telling you that Camp Checkmate is the most powerful marketing experience you'll ever find, and that you should do whatever you can to attend. 

Unlike the other events, this is not an informational seminar. It's an experiential workshop, where you come away with a completely revamped marketing message, as well as the skills to compete in just about any market. (I gave a small taste of the workshop – 6 minutes worth – to Perry Marshall's roundtable members last month, and they were over the moon about the results they got even in that short time. See the link below for a video roundout of their reactions.)

Stay tuned for more information over the next couple of days. This is a small group event (30 people max). The floodgates open as soon as I get the sales letter up, so if you want to get in ahead of the rush, and you don't need a ton of persuasion that spending 2 days with me in a small group workshop environment is worth it, go to the link below to get the ball rolling. If you go there, you may discover a shopping cart mistake that may make you very happy. I'm fixing the mistake tomorrow morning, first thing. But if you spot it now, definitely take advantage!

http://askhowie.com/camp-checkmate-unveiled

3. The System Seminar – Live, Chicago IL, April 9-11, 2010

I've attended just about every System Seminar since they began in 2002, and it's no exaggeration to say that my training there has been the foundation for my online marketing career. The first two events were the most powerful for me, as they focused on fundamentals.

Ken McCarthy, who runs the seminar, has put together a speaking roster that reflects a "back to basics" focus on copywriting, positioning, traffic generation.

If you sign up through this link, you're invited to be my guest on Saturday night, April 10 at a small group dinner with me and some of the sharpest minds in marketing: Perry Marshall, Drayton Bird, Timothy Seward of ROIRevolution, and Ben Moskel (the "super-affiliate"). 

Ken always puts on a razzle-dazzle pre-seminar series of expert interviews and articles, which you should get even if you have no intention of attending this year. The link below gives you access to all that, as well as entice you to attend the main event.

http://thesystemseminar.org

What I Can't Explain: The Energy Field of the Live Event

When you see a sales pitch for a live event, you'll always get a long bulleted list of "what you'll learn" and "what you'll now be able to accomplish." That's terrific – ultimately we attend events and develop ourselves professionally to increase our knowledge and capabilities.

But something else happens at the RIGHT live events that's simply magical, that can't be explained, and that can't be described adequately to someone who's never experienced it. 

You come under the sway of a powerful, positive, optimistic, proactive and generous energy field.

And for the time you're there, you reorient your behavior, self-image, and actions to attune with this field.

And if you're diligent at networking, you form relationships with people that sustain the field long after you return home.

Take stock briefly: how much time do you spend in the presence of a positive, optimistic, proactive and generous energy field? Does that describe your work environment now? Is everyone raring to go, focusing on how to better themselves, serve others, and take full responsibility for outcomes? If not, how does that affect you on a day-to-day basis? Are you curious to see how your entrepreneurial spirit can soar in the presence of warm, supportive thermals of energy?

Of course, I'd love it if you came to Camp Checkmate (if you can't make Durham in May, there's always Chicago in June – stay tuned).

But any time you can put yourself in an "elite" situation, where people self-select for self-improvement, you'll benefit. If the content is appropriate to your needs. And if the organizer has "heart" – a spirit that resonates with your own. 

While ebooks are useful and home study courses are valuable and teleseminars are empowering, a live event can be life-changing. I've experienced it many times, and I want the same for you.

Wishing you health, happiness and prosperity,

Howie

One proven to reduce infection rates, save lives, and reduce hospital operating costs by millions of dollars a year.

That costs next to nothing to manufacture or deploy.

That is so simple to operate that a kindergartner already knows how.

And that most doctors refuse to use, despite the clear evidence for its safety and efficacy.

That's just the position that Peter Provonost, a critical care specialist at Johns Hopkins University, found himself in 2001.

He wanted to tackle a specific problem: infections that occur when an IV line is put into a patient.

5 Simple Steps

Theoretically, these infections are 100% preventable if doctors just follow five simple steps:

(1) wash their hands with soap
(2) clean the patient’s skin with chlorhexidine antiseptic
(3) put sterile drapes over the entire patient
(4) wear a sterile mask, hat, gown, and gloves
(5) put a sterile dressing over the catheter site once the line is in

In case you've never gone to medical school, this isn't exactly the sort of stuff that causes would-be doctors to flunk out in despair. Not exactly rocket science, or heart surgery, or even organic chemistry. Basic procedure that every med student, resident and intern has been taught – and done – a thousand times.

Yet when he asked ICU nurses to record how well doctors performed these five steps, he was shocked: fully one-third of the time, at least one step was skipped.

Leading to infections among ICU patients, who are among the last people in the world you want to infect. They don't respond that well to opportunistic infection, turns out.

In response, Provonost instituted a simple 5-step checklist that doctors had to complete for every line they put in. They balked at the "extra paperwork," so nurses were authorized Nurses were authorized to stop doctors who skipped a step, with administrative backup to intervene if necessary.

What happened? Atul Gawande, writing in The New Yorker, relates:

Pronovost and his colleagues monitored what happened for a year afterward. The results were so dramatic that they weren’t sure whether to believe them: the ten-day line-infection rate went from eleven per cent to zero. So they followed patients for fifteen more months. Only two line infections occurred during the entire period. They calculated that, in this one hospital, the checklist had prevented forty-three infections and eight deaths, and saved two million dollars in costs.

The lowly checklist, as powerful as any drug or procedure developed in the past 50 years?

Checklists for Everything

Gawande makes a strong case for the use of checklists in his new book, The Checklist Manifesto. Anywhere you have a complicated situation and a high cost of failure, create a checklist.

Not any checklist will do. It turns out, Gawande discovered, that there's an art to writing good checklists. (For full details, read his book.) The right kind of checklist can save 200 lives when a plane loses an engine and has to glide to a landing in the Hudson River. The wrong kind can discombobulate the co-pilot so much that he can't think.

Your Free AdWords Checklists

I realize that AdWords is not the same as critical medical care or air safety, but it's still a complicated situation, and if it's your business, a high cost of failure.

With that in mind, I've created a bunch of AdWords checklists, following the AdWords best practices I teach in Traffic Surge, Profit Surge, and AdWords Checkmate, and the checklist best practices I learned from The Checklist Manifesto.

They include:

1.    Keyword Research Checklist
2.    Ad Preparation Checklist: Search Network
3.    Ad Writing Checklist
4.    Ad Split Testing Checklist: Top Level
5.    Ad Split Testing Checklist: Lowest Level

You can download them here, absolutely free.

And you can find out how to get a video and PDF tutorial on using the Checklists for only $2.30. Just scroll to page 6 in the download.

You can Google his name and find photos of the operation, which I have chosen not to reproduce here in the interests of I just had lunch.

You can also read a fascinating description of the operation in the British Medical Journal.

This isn’t the sort of how-to information that one hopes will be useful some day, but it certainly puts the toil of writing AdWords ads in perspective.

And that, funnily enough, is what I want to talk about today.

Are You Removing Your Own Appendix?

I’m a huge believer in business owners taking responsibility for their marketing. They can outsource execution, but should be driving the strategic direction. They can outsource customer outreach, but must intimately understand the customer.

So when I tell you that you are probably the worst person to be writing your own AdWords ads, you are right to look at me quizzically.

But that’s what I’ve decided.

Writing your own marketing messages is in some ways very much like trying to remove your own appendix.

No matter your skill at the operation, you’re still a little too close to the action to be as effective as you might want.

To say nothing of the pain.

I discovered this by accident, during a mastermind group I was leading last year.

One of the participants, let’s call him Doug (even though his real name is Alfred), requested help with his ads. So the rest of us grilled Doug on his product, his ideal customer, his top competitors, etc.

And I must have been getting tired, because I suggested that we all take a few minutes working independently, writing ads and then handing them to Doug.

The results were astonishing.

From spinning his wheels in a Google Rut three inches wide and two miles deep, Doug now had a dozen radically new messages to test.

And many of them were brilliant.

And all of them were inside him, but he couldn’t get them out himself.

Much like that infected Russian appendix.

How to Outsource Marketing Messages

OK, so I’m not suggesting you just hire someone to write your marketing message for you.

You wouldn’t pay a doctor to insert an appendix, would you?

(This is a crappy and illogical metaphor; I’m aware of that. But I’m on a roll, it seems to me. So on I plow.)

No, what you want is someone who can draw insight and empathy out of you. Who can see with a clearer perspective what your customer cares about. Who can accurately see how you are truly different from your competitors.

You provide the raw material, based on your experience.

Your “marketing surgeon” provides a third-party view and fresh eyes.

Click here for a PDF tutorial on a 7-step exercise that you can do with a friend that will give you tremendous insight into your Ideal Customer.

Proof

At Perry Marshall’s exclusive Roundtable meeting in Orlando last month, I led a Checkmate exercise that culminated in members writing ads for each other.

Each participant had six minutes: two to describe their ideal customer, two to answer a specific set of questions from other members, and two to sit back and watch the other folks write new ads for them.

Here’s a short video montage of their reactions to this exercise:

The exercise worked so well because everyone in the room was oriented in Checkmate methodology (that took 20 minutes), everyone understood the power questions that lead to breakthroughs (10 minutes), and everyone was sincerely interested in being of service to each other (that’s thanks to Perry, and everyone’s upbringing – I can’t claim credit there ;)

Buoyed by the success of a brief Camp Checkmate exercise at Perry’s Roundtable, I am taking Camp Checkmate on the road.

But I’m keeping the workshops small, so I can manage the interactions and ensure that everyone leaves with new marketing copy and a polished and streamlined strategic direction.

As in, these workshops will sell out because there’s scarcity built right in.

I Outsource My Own Appendix Removal

I finally bit the bullet and hired a copywriter to help me describe Camp Checkmate. As fine a writer as my mother tells me I am, I was just getting in my own way. I wasn’t describing the benefits of Camp Checkmate clearly and powerfully. I was getting too caught up in process description, and not articulating the amazing outcome that everyone who has gone through the process has experienced.

So I’m waiting for the new and improved sales letter, which should be ready to go by March 1.

But that leaves me 3 weeks just sitting here staring at my own appendix, and my fingers are getting twitchy.

So if you’d like to be one of the few, the proud, the Camp Checkmate grads (note to self: look into Camp Checkmate t-shirts, hats and water bottles), then skip the rush when the good sales letter comes out, and reserve your place now.

Camp Checkmate Details

East Coast Camp: April 1-2, 2010: Durham NC

Midwest Camp: June 10-11, 2010: Chicago IL (with guest appearances by Perry Marshall and Glenn Livingston)

Cost: $1497, or three payments of $532, and you can bring one guest (significant business or life partner) for an extra $95 to cover the cost of food and materials. (Just click the "Camp Checkmate – Colleague" link at the bottom of the shopping cart page.)

Includes: Two full days of Camp Checkmate, full lunch and refreshments, course materials, the AdWords Checkmate Deluxe digital home study course, and one year of the Chess Club, a monthly coaching club for Checkmate grads.

Act Now, Save Big

Early bird discount for Gold Key Members, good until Friday February 12, 2010. When you click one of the links below, you'll save $500. As in, Camp Checkmate for just $997, or three payments of $366. 

Go here for the single payment plan.

Go here for the three-payment plan.

Once you register, I'll be in touch with all the details, and you'll get immediate electronic access to the complete Checkmate Deluxe package.

Looking forward to seeing you at one of the upcoming Camp Checkmate workshops!

They're also key components of menu psychology.

Check out this NY Times article by Sarah Kershaw on research into how menu decisions can affect restaurant profitability (thanks to Mark Hurst of CreativeGood.com for bringing it to my attention).

Decoys: A Powerful Marketing Technique

Using decoy items is one of my favorite marketing techniques. Writes Kershaw,

"Some restaurants use what researchers call decoys. For example, they may place a really expensive item at the top of the menu, so that other dishes look more reasonably priced; research shows that diners tend to order neither the most nor least expensive items, drifting toward the middle. Or restaurants might play up a profitable dish by using more appetizing adjectives and placing it next to a less profitable dish with less description so the contrast entices the diner to order the profitable dish."

Decoys work so well because they capitalize on our brain's powerful tendency to save energy when making decisions. Instead of considering all the possibilities the universe has to offer us, we focus on the select few right in front of our nose. As a marketer, if you can influence the set of options, you can influence the final decision.

That's the whole principle behind my AdWords Checkmate method, which I'm finally ready to share in all its glory with the online marketing community. 

To get the early bird scoop, go here.

Just a web page – nothing to download, opt in for, buy, or beg.

One of the steps is to claim your blog on technorati.com. That's what I'm doing now, by entering a code into this blog post.

6HQTK8B4AGFE

There, that's done. Got it, technorati?

I'll keep you posted on this blog (posted, get it? ;) how well Michael's methods work for me.

You've got about 7 seconds to prove to your prospect – who may have just cost you $5 if they clicked your ad – that they should stick around and consider doing business with you.

Most landing pages kind of suck at this.

Here are the most common mistakes:

1. No Headline or Irrelevant Headline

Approach: "Prospects have all day, so I'll take my time in revealing why they should do business with me. If I get around to it."

Result: Prospect spends 5 seconds trying to find the "scent trail" to their goal, fail, and go back to Google for another try.

Example: 

2. Overwhelming the visitor with features and jargon

Approach: "I don't know exactly who you are or what's important to you, so I'll hit you hard with everything I've got."

Result: Prospect is overwhelmed, confused, and bored. Leaves so fact you can see skid marks on their monitor.

Example:

3. Rejecting every known principle of user-centered design

Approach: "The more color and bold fonts I use, the more you'll want to read it."

Result: Prospect reaches for Advil and throws away their reading glasses.

Example: 

4. Wasting space on big logos, irrelevant stock photos of happy multi-racial teams and young women wearing headsets, and meaningless marketing pablum

Approach: "I'll impress you with the graphical professionalism of my site."

Result: Prospect can't find anything interesting or unique, yawns, and possibly drools once or twice as they struggle to stay awake long enough to hit the Back button.

Example:

5. Trying to make the sale before establishing the know-like-trust factor

Approach: "If I just get right down to business, your rational mind will obviously see the benefits of choosing me.

Result: Prospect sees the benefits, but doesn't have a good "gut feeling" and so continues searching.

Example: 

How to Create an Effective Landing Page

You must start with the question, "What does my prospect believe I've promised them on this page?" 

The landing page must instantly demonstrate that you didn't "Bait and Switch" them with your ad. 

But beyond that, you need to develop the Know-Like-Trust factor very quickly.

And you have to understand what's most important to your prospect – their current "Point of Pain." And explain quickly and powerfully how your solution can eliminate that pain.

Video is one tool that can quickly build a relationship, hold interest, and highlight the big promise. But most online video is either overproduced and "salesy," or grossly amateurish and visually boring (I plead guilty to the latter).

Video Done Right

Recently I came across a company, Epipheo Studios, that produces some of the smartest, most entertaining, and most effective videos I've seen online. You can check out their video portfolio here.

Yesterday I spoke to Managing Director Ben Crawford about their approach. We spoke for 40 minutes, during which he revealed his formula for distilling a company's entire story into an easy-to-grasp three minute video. The key, Ben says, is to aim to create an epiphany – a moment where someone's beliefs change dramatically.

Once that happens, the prospect knows, likes and trusts you, understands why they should do business with you, and may spread your video virally with others.

The full interview is available for download for members of the Ring of Fire, the AdWords and Online Marketing Coaching Club available at http://askhowie.com/ring. (Try it for as little as $20/month.)

Click the play arrow below to listen to the first 20 minutes, plus a short Ring of Fire promo at the end :)

Hope to see you in the Ring of Fire soon!

A couple of attendees had nearly instantaneous "aha's" about ways they could connect better with their prospects. Very powerful and deep insights that will now begin to play out in all aspects of their marketing – assuming they make it past the AdWords Split Test Reality Check.

Why did this occur after a body exercise, when the participants had been thinking and strategizing about this market for years?

Where We Keep the Data

The body is a way to do an "end run" around the defense of the Reticular Activating System, the RAS. Basically, the RAS is a filter that takes the millions of bits of information that he have predecided are not pertinent to our big goals and shunts them away from consciousness, into the murky waters of the unconscious.

Here's Richard Bartlett, from page 132 of Matrix Energetics:

"The conscious mind is like a gatekeeper whose job is to filter and delete any information that doesn't fit the paradigm of what could be called a 'need to know basis.' If the information appears irrelevant… then it is usually relegated to the 'back room' of your subconscious. It [the subsconscious] can process something along the magnitude of eleven million bits of data per second, compared with the left brain's paltry sum of just seven bits per second (plus or minus two bits). So pay attention to your flashes of intuition and your hunches, for they are likely to be based on far more information than that of your normal conscious state. [italics in original]."

The body stores and accesses all the data that isn't present to our "need to know" mind, the one that reads marketing books and analyzes AdWords reports and types questions in the Ring of Fire. So tapping into the body can open that storehouse of information that we didn't realize was key, because of our preconceptions.

No "Faith" Required

And the nice thing about operating from intuition in the AdWords space, is that our insights and hunches are testable. We don't have to take anything on faith. As we test, we learn to trust certain intuitional experiences and modalities, at least to the point where we begin to routinely pay attention to them.

Accessing the Unconscious with Clients

I find that when I talk with clients and prospects on the phone, I often "get a hit" – some thought or image or sensation comes unbidden to my attention. For a long time, I wouldn't even notice it. Then, I would notice it fleetingly but push it out of the way: "Hey, I'm trying to concentrate here!"

Then I would notice it with curiosity: "Why am I seeing a submarine here?… What's the significance of the movie "Empire Records" to this client problem?… "Why is my right shoulder suddenly aching?"

Sometimes I mention it on the phone now. Sometimes I take the time to translate it into an innocent question, so the client doesn't think I'm crazy. Almost always, the image or sensation begins to make sense, pointing to some aspect of the situation that hadn't been communicated or acknowledged. A "larger container" or context in which to operate.

Anyway, the exercise took about 8 minutes, so what do you have to lose?

Got stories of intuitions, images, or sensations guiding you to wise action and positive outcomes? Please share them in the Comments section.