One of the toughest decisions to make when you are first starting out with your online marketing effort (new business or existing offline business) is how much learning must you do before you can jump in and starting DOING your internet marketing?
I’ve had members come to Information Marketing Zone from each side, some have spent 8+ years doing little more than buying products, going to seminars and paying “experts” for coaching leading to little or no profits.
At the same time I’ve had people completely frustrated and burnt out by marketing their brains out, but making all kinds of basic mistakes that completely break their spirit ending up with months of wasted investment and time.
RIGHT MIX OF LEARNING AND DOING
Believe it or not, there is a “right” balance when it comes to learning and then executing that consistently leads to optimal results – “CRUSHING IT” as my friend Gary Vaynerchuck would say!
Having grown several businesses online and helped thousands of others make more profit, here are 4 tips to balancing learning with executing that will get you where you want to be…
1. LEARN THE MONEY MAP
There is a “certain” level of basic knowledge that is required mainly around
1) How money is made online (models like infoproducts, affiliate marketing, selling apps, services, advertising, etc…) – so they can focus down on an area that aligns with their interests/strengths,
2) Be confident they are chasing real money and be able to identify role models to watch in that space
In my experience this is VERY important as 9 out of 10 newbies we end up working with are chasing business models that they are not at all interested in or have a particular strength in simply because they think they will make Millions. Learning the basic money models is a critical first step before you jump into anything.
2. CASE STUDIES OF SUCCESS
I don’t know about you, but I learn a TON and get super motivated when I see successes…it improves your belief and faith that you will succeed and gives you some real advantages in terms of techniques to use to get rolling quick. Anything I want to master in life, I quickly frame my approach (#1 above) and then learn quickly from high achievers by modelling what they are doing. Sometimes you can shortcut via coaching/mentoring or buying one of their products – other times you can learn by just watching. I have used both approaches and benefited from both.
3. RAPID ACTION PLAN
Action plan – put together a quick action plan around what you learned and what your expectations are…then DO IT!  I know this was your original argument, and yes the quicker you can get to execution the better. I agree…with the only caveat being the two preceeding steps. The only other comment on execution is having a mentor or coach to bounce off your results – most people neither wildly fail or wildly succeed…instead their results end up somewhere in the middle where they need some help understanding if they should continue or alter their course…some experience comes in handy there.
4. BEYOND NEWBIE/BEGINNER TO HIGHER PROFITS
Moving from beginner to advanced…I too am a big proponent of trial-error-adjust until you succeed…but there can be tremendous advantage to using point trainings, coaching, etc to help you refine and advance your results.
A good example for me was copywriting.
I started out doing all of my own copywriting in the early days and had mediocre results (less than 1% conversion rate) – so I had to work like a dog to market in order to make decent money.  I knew I wanted to be closer to 2% and in some cases exceed 2% so I paid for some coaching and within 2-months was able to double my conversions…still go back to that resource when I find a sales copy piece under-performing.
WHERE ARE YOU TODAY?
Where do you find yourself today? Right at the beginning of the learning curve? Executing like crazy? Taking the next step? Leave us a comment and let us know.
