100 years ago, in 1903, the Wright Brothers achieved their monumental goal of flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
Most people don't know that there were quite a few other people trying to build an airplane at the same time. One was Alexander Graham Bell; another was the President of the Smithsonian Institution.
All of these men were much better funded than a certain little-known pair of bicycle shop mechanics from Ohio with a wind tunnel in their garage.
But there's a key difference that led to the Wright Brothers' success.
The other guys focused on making a more powerful engine.
Orville and Wilbur Wright focused on the plane.
Specifically, the Wright Brothers built their airplane as a glider without an engine - then mounted the engine later, almost as an afterthought.
They flew it in the breeze first, then added power later. That was the key to their success. They discovered that when you're building an airplane, the wings are more important than the engine.
What does this have to do with Internet Marketing?
The point is that all of this is not really about Google AdWords, or any particular way to get traffic. What matters more than all of that is the ability of your website to get people to take action - to opt in, to buy, or whatever you want them to do.
Google AdWords just happens to be the fastest, easiest, and sometimes the least expensive way to get the traffic there. But once again, it's not about Google - it's about your website.
What Google will help you do, more effectively than anything else, is send highly-targeted, predictable traffic to your website, day in and day out, so you can experiment, test, and perfect your sales process.
Perry Marshall's "Expanding Universe Theory"
for Doing a Marketing Rollout
Now listen up, because what I'm about to explain is profoundly important. It seems simple, but it's revolutionary. Please pay attention here.
For most businesses, the FIRST thing you should do is properly set up a Google AdWords campaign and play with your website until the traffic converts to sales profitably.
Frankly it doesn't matter how long it takes to make that work. Every step of the process teaches you very important things, even if it's through trial and error.
Why use Google for that? Here's why: It's just about the only way to get a steady, predictable stream of traffic day in and day out. Most other sources of traffic, like free search engine listings and PR, are things you have no real control of.
THEN... once it's working on AdWords, you take the same messages and sales process and roll out your product in this order:
- Google AdWords
- Search Engine Optimization
- Other PPC's like Overture and Findwhat etc etc.
- Email promotions
- Affiliates
- Press Releases
- Direct Mail
- Print Advertising
You see, items #2 through 8 are more expensive and less "controllable" than Google. Get it right with Google first, where you have total control. THEN do email. THEN get help from affiliates. Don't let any of these other things or people be your guinea pig - if it works on Google AdWords first, then you can invest in these other things and be fairly certain it will work.
I can't overemphasize how powerful this is. Usually pay per click traffic represents only a tiny percentage of the people who are potential customers for you. When you roll out to items 2 through 8, you can often make five to fifty times as much money as you were making with AdWords. And no longer is it necessary to risk more than a few hundred dollars on a marketing campaign!
That's exactly what my purpose was in building my Google AdWords toolkit - to help you have a traffic engine that does exactly what you want, and minimizes your risk.
A little traffic. A lot of traffic. Turn it on or turn it off at will.
You can use it the same way the Wright Brothers used the wind tunnel in their bicycle shop - to perfect the airplane before going out to "the big time."
I wish you big-time success with Google AdWords, and I solemnly promise killer value and a tremendous range of clever tricks and shortcuts for squeezing the most out of AdWords for the least amount of money possible.
Perry Marshall, perrymarshall.com
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