Normally, I don’t win things when there are drawings for prizes. The day I attended the Technology Council of Southern California for a seminar on Internet Marketing was an exception. I thoroughly enjoyed the seminar given by Mr. Scott Fox, and threw my business card in the hat for a drawing. As luck would have it, I won an autographed copy of his latest book, e-Riches 2.0. That was definitely my lucky day.
Fox makes it abundantly clear that internet marketing is in our future if we expect to be in business. More importantly, he shares his experience in the field of Internet Marketing where he has been very successful. He give practical and clear advice for the layperson and avoids the “geek speak” to which we are often subjected by those who wish to impress us and separate us from some of our profits.
In this very well written book, Fox gives us a complete view of the Internet Marketing landscape as it exists today. It is most useful to read to book from front to back, but it is laid out in such a logical manner that you could well jump into a section of particular interest to you without having to wade through everything that comes before it. In the first section, Fox makes the case for how 21st century marketing has changed and where it is likely headed. Section 2 covers e-Mail as the tool that is still doing the heavy lifting on Internet Marketing. In this section he discusses how to build your e-mail lists and how to properly use auto-responders. Section 3 addresses Social Media Marketing, the new kid on the block. Many of us who are just now scratching the surface of the Social Networking sites will find this section to be most informative and perhaps correct some misconceptions we’ve gathered along the way. Section 4 addresses the need for blogs and microblogs (Twitter). Section 5 delves into the realm of Public Relations on the Internet. PR is presented in the PROM format; Public Relations Opportunity Matrix. The focus here is to use what we have called “PR” in the past to be the driver for attracting visitors and SEO robots to your site. Section 6 is focused on Broadcasting on line to build your following and as a method for you to provide excellent, fresh content for your website and/or blog. As a bonus, Fox threw in section 7 to explain how and why we should use Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. He is not confused about the difference between advertising and marketing. On the contrary, he is quite aware that this is an “off-topic” section for his book, but still necessary for those of us building a web presence. Finally, section 8 of the book details how we can and should measure the success of our marketing campaigns.
Fox has provided much useful detailed information for the reader as well as offers peppered throughout the book for free or limited time free access to additional information on his website. He thus models exactly what he is suggesting the reader needs to do to make the internet marketing campaign a success. For example, Fox lets us know that e-mails offering business info to professionals are usually best sent on Tuesdays. He acknowledges that there is no one best answer for your campaign and suggests that you use the statistics available to decide what is best for your marketing.
Perhaps the best advice I found in this book was to make sure you go slowly, check the data as you go, and for your blog, if you don’t have something useful to say, don’t say anything! In short, this book is definitely worth the read and will be on my desk as a reference as I work my way through the internet morass.
Click here to see the book on Amazon.