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I have a very good friend who is a former marketing exec. at Reebok.

When we last chatted, I asked, "When are they going to bring back Terry Tate?"

Surprisingly, the answer was "Never."

What many don't know is that while Terry Tate created a tremendous amount of buzz for Reebok, he did very little to improve the bottom line. And face it, despite Reebok's size, and success, they are in business to make money.

We're going to see if we can figure out why this incredibly popular and entertaining campaign was simply a flash in the pan.

The Terry Tate - Office Linebacker was a series of short comedy TV commercials created by Rawson Marshall Thurber, for Reebok, based on a short film pilot he created in 2000.  Tate was first shown at Super Bowl XXXVII.  An entertainment company bought the rights to the character and pitched it to Reebok's ad agency and they built a great campaign around the character.

The Tate films were so well received and fun, that Reebok decided to buy super bowl ad space, build a website around him, have him run for Governor of California, and make a ton of PR appearances, etc.

Ok, so what happened with Terry Tate. Its like having a tremendous amount of traffic to a website and never monetizing it.

Here's the catch. Ads work from a branding perspective, but what I'm starting to notice is that the social networking/viral marketing/call to action that direct sellers have used for years (most start-ups and small businesses use direct sales or guerilla marketing, because they don't have deep pockets) is becoming far more effective than conventional adverisement.

Reason: Consumer Information Overload.

The consumer is inundated with messages, but if a company can leverage his "brands" on the social marketing scene or marketing buzz, I predict this will be the future to increased revenues.

Example: Terry Tate gained a tremendous amount of "buzz" but didn't improve sales….

There was no call to action. The Terry series were brilliant from a branding perspective but what was he advertising? Where was the call to action. Where was the link from Terry to the direct benefit of the consumer. Put another way, Terry's value to the consumer was a bunch of very, very hilarious and entertaining videos, sponsored by Reebok,… not looking cool in my reebok shoes or running faster or jumping higher, which is Reebok's bottom line.

Reebok must've spent millions on the terry series (and I love them) but where was the product launch? What was he promoting/sales?

Now, that's the problem Here is the solution….(and there ALWAYS is a solution to every problem)

How cool would it be to have the official terry Tate blog with updated podcasting, links right to the official reebok store and links to retail outlets throughout the world. That way like a faucet, you can control your own sales by leveraging your product launches right from your "avatar"/branding"

So, in summary, you create a brand.

Let that brand become a living, breathing avatar…couple that avatar with a call to action…..buy this new shoe that has the cool, new widget that will make you run faster, jump higher, whatever..the point is what direct marketers do so well is give the benefit to the client up front. 

One of the problems with large corporations. is their thinking.  Because they often have deep pockets, they can spend millions on conventional advertising. This often leads to "reckless advertising."

The last couple of months have been explosive for my business.

Recent months have meant bigger and more clients (my marketing company just landed two major
contracts in multi-million dollar spaces) and I find myself becoming busier and busier.

When I first started marketing online, I didn't know how to get traffic and the site "failed."
I shut the site down about a year and half ago.

Then I learned SEO (search engine optimization) and I was on my way.
SEO is FREE traffic and means insane traffic to websites.

So, what does this have to do with you?

I need your help.

http://www.richnavypilot.com/training/marketing.htm

There are some who have asked me:

"What is blogging"
"What is FTP?"
"How do you blog?"
"Can you optimize my website?"

I don't have time now to consult with every single business owner. So, I've decided to put my money where my mouth is
and unveil my secret online marketing strategies in a series of tutorials.

But I want your feedback.

See, any good marketer knows that in order to provide a great product to
the masses, it must be tested. I'd like you to test my videos.

Are the videos too long? Are they too short? Is the content to
complicated, too easy, etc.

Now, these aren't some short-winded, cheap videos to teach you how to get traffic.
These videos will be professionaly made and you'll get lifetime access to these videos and my
upcoming memership site.

That's right. You'll have lifetime access to my site, plus thousands of dollars woth of bonuses.

If you like what you see, and have read this letter this far, simply click
below to get started right away.

But I promise that if you see my tutorials, your business will go to the next level.

Best Regards,

Mark Archer,
Founder, RNP    

I came across this story over the wire….and laughed out loud.

Saturday March 08, 2008, 6:40 PM ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) —

She lost nearly $1 million at Atlantic City's casinos, and now she wants them to pay. Arelia Margarita Taveras says they had a duty to notice her compulsive gambling problem and cut her off. She's suing six casinos for $20 million. Experts say it's a longshot. Taveras said she was so addicted to gambling that she would go days at a time without eating or sleeping, brushing her teeth with disposable wipes so she didn't have to leave the table. Sometimes, she'd pass out.

 http://www.nj.com/southjersey/index.ssf/2008/03/woman_who_gambles_away_a_milli.html

It is one of the most common - asked questions I get….
 How do I make money online?   

There are essentially three main ways to earn money online. Within these three categories are subsets or sub-categories of each category.

1. Advertising.

In essence, Google gives away an outstanding search engine to its users, and in exchange, makes a substantial amount of money through advertising.  Every time you search Google, you'll see ads displayed along with your results. (Paid advertisements are displayed along the right hand side, while the free traffic is displayed along the left side of google's search engine results page) 

Those ads on the right are never "mixed in" with the organic results - there is no "pay to play" on Google… which is one of the reasons Google became the most popular search engine in the first place.

But the sponsored text-link ads above and to the right of the results generate a great deal of money for Google. These ads are known as "Google Adwords." Those who wish to advertise via Google can learn more on Google's Adwords page.

In addition, you may have noticed columns or boxes containing similar text-link ads on other websites - such as Rich Navy PIlot.com  - which say "Ads by Google" at the top. Google already had a powerful system for selling and displaying ads in association with their own search engine. From there, it wasn't much of a leap to start displaying ads on other websites. Webmasters of popular sites with interesting content can sign up on Google's Adsense page and begin displaying Google ads to their users.

Rich Navy Pilot (RNP) made a post/video Here, titled, Moving the Free Line discussing how great companies give away free products or service, and then "upsell" their products to their clients.  Google gives away a search engine and makes money on the "back–end"

Other advertising examples include:
1. Banner Ads
2. Private Text Links
3. Pay Per Play Conent. The Yellow Pages are an example of this. In order to get listed in their publication, the uses will have to pay.

2.  Selling Information
Information can come in many shapes and forms.
If you think about it, the books lined along Barnes and Noble is simply information.  Information can also be educational CDs, ebooks, consulting services and seminars.

By displaying rich, valuable "content" the publisher of the website controls the price of his information. Since its inception, internet users have enjoyed "free information" online and successful businesses have experienced that by giving moving the free line and giving away free information and then offering more detailed, valuable, priced information at a higher price is a win-win for everyone.

Now, as the business owner, or web owner, you control the price and packaging of that information and can classify the information you are selling in terms of the following:

1. Leads. Many businesses don't want to get into the marketing arena and would rather "outsource" their services to professional internet marketers or part-time webmasters. This becomes a lucrative proposal for both parties. As professionals increase the quality and amount of leads, the professional will pay for the leads that are sold.

Example:
A professional marketer strikes a joint-venture with an estate attorney.  He asks the firm, "Who is your target market? (this is very crucial in marketing. To find out why, click here.) 

The law firm replies, the ideal lead would be male, age 45, with a networth of over $2.5 million dollars. They both agree to a price per lead. The marketer develops his campaigns and starts funneling in the ideal candidate and then sells the leads to the firm.   

Professional Services: What if the legal firm doesn't want to outsource and develop their own marketing campaigns? Then, the legal firm would setup a series of websites to attract their ideal prospe

Packaged Information. Information can be packaged in so many ways, it is difficult to count. But, in essence, the website owner would sell his information via the following ways.

1. Membership clubs
2. Ebooks or Reports
3. Consultative Services
4. Educational Products like CDs/Seminars/DVDs, home study courses. 

3. Selling Products
Its one of the most lucrative ways to make money online and one of my favorites.

By selling products online, you reach border- less customers and your overhead is low. Brad Fallon,  owner of the popular My Wedding Store.com grossed over $30 million dollars per year in 2006 with only a $2,000 investment.

Don't have any products to sell?
That's ok too, because you can sell other people's products as an affiliate, or you can order products from a wholesaler and "dropship" the products to your customers doors. To learn more about affiliate marketing, click on the link provided.

Stay tuned for details from RNP, your source to everyhing about business.

In my experience, many people change their results over time. Our human brains are programmed to resist change. In fact, studies show that when faced with change, the subconscious will "talk' yourself out of the improvement or change.

Ever wonder why so many new year's resolutions go unfiinished?

Wealth Rule #4 states Get Rich At Night.

What this essentially means is that very often folks want to change and are sick of their jobs or careers. They begin looking for some new opportunities and they slowly work their business part-time, because many cannot afford to leave their jobs to pursue their businesses full-time.

They use the Business Growth Strategies here on www.richnavypilot.com and start to earn some decent income.   Herein lies the problem. How does someone have the time to work their full - time jobs and work their business on the side?

Its a great question and there is always a solution.

I can tell you from experience, working a part-time business around a full-time job is doable and one of the secrets to my success has been time management.

Let's face it. We all have an equal number of hours in a day. No more. No less. Its not how many hours a day we have, but what we do with those hours.
 

Here is a summary of Pam Dodd's , founder of Clarity Consulting, Top 5 Time Management Tips.

1. Learn and Grow.
I've personally enrolled into The Franklin Covey workshops and I strongly recommend these classes. They Guarantee your results will improve. They will improve your focus, and give you the necessary tools to achieve peak performance for a nominal fee.

2. Eliminate Time Wasters.

The biggest time wasters are:

A. Television: the average Amerian in 2003 spent 1,745 hours watching television, which works out to 145 hours a month. That's more than six complete days in front of the TV each month. Curtail the television to your favorite shows or shows that you think will improve your business.

B. Minimize Distractions. Just Say No when distractions come knocking. When you are in the middle of a project and the phone rings, don't answer it. Schedule a time to reply to your emails, schdule meetings spiritually, physically and socially.

3. Use a Personal Planning System
All time management experts recommend using a personal planning system. It serves as your main productivity tool.  Some people swear by electronic planners.

Others prefer paper. planners – commercial organizers, small notebooks, steno or legal pads, or index cards. It doesn’t matter what you use as long as you use it consistently and it helps you be more organized and productive.  If you have a system that’s already working well, great!

If you don’t have a system, you need to get one.

4. Set Goals
When you align your values, vision, goals, and actions, you accomplish more important things more often.  Writing down your goals is key. Only 3% of adult Americans have specific, written goals. The rest of us wing it.

There’s nothing difficult about identifying your goals. The reason most people don’t actually commit them to paper and tell others about them
is that then they’d be accountable for achieving them. If you’re vague They can be easy or hard, simple or complex, short-term or long-term. Some examples:

Run a 10K
Walk 30 minutes a day 5 days a week
 Pay off my debts
 Explore my family tree
 Become a good partner (business, personal)
 Spend more time (with my family, friends, by myself)
 Take three trips a year
 Weigh 140 pounds
 Buy a personal computer
 Buy a company computer system
 Write a book
 Start a business
 Increase my client base by 20%
 Plan

5. Prioritize.
Your priorities are the important things you do to reach your goals.  If your goal is good health and you make it a priority, you might not like getting up at 5 am to go to the gym before work or cutting out dessert each night.

Without clear priorities, it’s hard to reach your goals. Poorly aimed actions rarely hit the bull’s eye.  Below are popular ways to prioritize. If you know your values and vision, have set SMART goals, and crafted a realistic action plan, prioritizing should be easy for you.

In summary, there may be long hours at first. There may be a steep learning curve, but if you are serious about starting your own business, or investing in real estate, you can do it part-time and get rich at night.

How many times have you seen a cool, little invention and uttered the words, "Why didn't I think of that?"

We all have ideas.

Some ideas are great.

Some are ideas are boring.

Some ideas are ugly. 

I often look around and find hundreds of things that we can improve or optimize.

Here are a couple. 

-Tivo for the radio. How many times have you listened to the radio and heard a commercial and wished you could pause, rewind, and hear it again.
-A Health Store Drive Thru. In California, health stores like Whole Foods and Henry's are popping up all over the place. Wouldn't it be nice to have one where you can drive up to a drive up window and order your smoothie, or organic wheat grass?

Every day, I'll look at a website and say to myself, I can do better than that. Why don't they implement this strategy or that tactic?

Ideas are Great, but they can also kill.

What I mean is that a few years ago, I was working so many businesses on the side, my wife wanted to kill me.  It seemed to her that I had A-D-D (attention deficit disorder) and I couldn't sit still.

Well, this business strategy almost made me broke.

Looking back I now realize that the only reason I was jumping from one business idea to the next was FEAR. I was afraid that if one business failed, I HAD to have another sitting in the wings to scoop me from safety.

I then read a comment by the great Warren Buffet who called diversifying one's portfolio as nonsense.

His point was run with a tested, proven plan and focus like a laser until the business is systematized and successful. Thenk lather, rinse, repeat.

And that's when the light bulb came on. The great business owners SYSTEMIZE their businesses.

There is no question that when starting, the business owner is wearing so many hats, its difficult to keep up. However, as the business starts to grow, that's where the pros systemize their business, outsource and work on creating more value for their clients.

Going back to the marketing template I wrote about, the professionals start thinking how to work on steps #2 and #3 for their existing clients.

Remember the power of the follow-up.

In this video, my marketing company explains how easy it is to acquire a domain name.

I walked into a deli in Southern California. The store was in a great location, had great curb appeal and made their sandwiches with the "old-school" meat grinders.

The signage outside of the store said, "Sandwiches, Coffee, Smoothies, Books." I took my sandwich outside and ate the sandwich outside the store front under the awning and thought the deli had potential. It was a pretty good sandwich. I don't think I'm the only one in Southern California who is tired of seeing their roast beef weighed on a scale like at some other generic franchises.  

I finished my sandwich and watched the crowd of peole milling around the store.

I watched as an older lady walked up to the sandwich maker and asked how much a used book cost. The sandwich maker stopped what he was doing, looked at the book and quoted the price. He then went back to making his sandwich making.

Right then, I had a sickening feeling and I knew the Store was Trying to Be Too Many Things To Too Many People.

Why not just make and sell great sandwiches? Do the Common Thing Uncommonly Well.

Ask any successful business owner, what the key to their business is and the likely answer is Marketing.

What is Marketing?

Simply put, Marketing is defining the target audience that is most likely to buy from you.

If you can't define them, you can't find them.

About a year later, I watched the small deli close its doors and go out of business.

Sadly, there problem wasn't their product or service; it was their marketing. They hadn't clearly defined their market.

There are 3 Keys to Marketing, and Growing Your Business exponentially.
(Remember how a penny doubled grows exponentially?)

1. Find More Prospects and Convert those Prospects to Sales.

2. Sell More Often to Your Clients.

3. Sell a Higher Price Item to your Clients.

Its all so easy, but in my experience the majority of companies and business professionals focus on one aspect of marketing and that is #1…Finding New Clients.

How easy would it be for any company to folow up and re-sell products or services to existing clients? 

What about a club membership for exclusive members?
A Thank you card to existing clients?
A "true" discount for existing, loyal members?
A Free book or small gift.

Fortune 500 companies spend millions of dollars on advertising, doing their best to find new clients, but I read that according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR) 91% of all Realtors never contact the buyer or the seller of a home after closing. Not once. After someone spent thousands of dollars  with a realtor and they don’t bother to call or write?

Come to think of it I received a real estate book as a gift from a investment "syndicator." The book was fairly good and I would rather do business with that "syndiator" then some of the other agents.   

Any good online marketer will point out that the lifeblood to his business is his back-end.

Its the higher priced, more valuable items that he offers to his "list" of clients.

Now, if online marketers "get" this concept, why don't the big guys?

Why do they call them brokers?

Face it. Words have power. They have meaning. They have purpose.

Have you ever wondered why they call them "brokers"?

I used to work as a broker and wasn't very good.

It was a Wednesday afternoon and I was tired. I had been talking with a major developer on a project and was explaining how our firm could increase his listing price by tapping into our company's extensive list of buyers.  He was a friend and "recovering broker" himself and gently told me he wasn't interested in any exclusive listings.

I thanked him for his time, hung up the phone and looked at my watch and realized that I was late for our firm's weekly training meeting.

I walked into the well-lit room with plush carpeting and leather chairs. Without any available seats, I decided to stand. 

I looked around the room to see well-dressed men in expensive suits and ties listen to the firm's manager discuss the virtues and vision of the company.

I yawned and lazily looked outside in La jolla and wondered who owned all the multi-million dollar buildings overlooking the boulevard.  

Did a REIT own them? A private investor or developer?

I then took another look at the room and realized that half the room of licensed brokers probably didn't know what a REIT was.

The manager then erased his notes on his whiteboard and casually said, "Out of curiosity, how many of you personally own income producing real estate?"

I casually raised my hand and Incredulously noticed one other broker raise his.

I couldn't believe it.

Some of these hot shot real estate brokers were bragging about $300,000 commission checks and only one of them in a room full of 45 brokers owned real estate.  If these guys were so good at finding deals, what didn't they buy the deals they found?  

I quit the firm 3 weeks later and never looked back.

For the record, I work with and have some excellent brokers and value their work. They are some of the hardest working  professionals and their expertise and knowledge in some areas are invaluable.

However, I also know some very Broke Brokers.

Its not hard to tell. The Broke ones pitch a deal thinking what their commission checks will be.

The good ones pitch the deal and add value within the deal.

Put another way.

Great Brokers give before they receive.

Broke Brokers take before they give.

When being pitched ask one simple question and watch the bad brokers spin, "Mr Broker, if you are telling me that this is such a great deal, why aren't you investing yourself?"

The ones I work with say, "I am. I'm willing to waive my commission if we can partner."

See, when it comes down to it, its all about Mindset and Fear.

Good Investors continually stretch themselves and are constantly venturing out past their comfort zones. 

Bad brokers are slaves to their FEAR and content with picking up the peanuts left behind.

See what happens by creating value in your profession.

Give Before You Receive and you'll be amazed at the results.

You only get what you give. 

I love Gmail. I take my emails everywhere.

One of the best features of Gmail is that if your computer crashes, all of your emails reside on google's mammoth servers.

Other Benefits:   

• Online documents and spreadsheets. 
• Best spam-stopping tool in the market.  I've dealt with Outlook, Yahoo, and Hotmail, and discovered that Gmail has the best spam-stopping capability.
• Just like outlook you can segregate your mail by labels that can be applied to emails.
• Filters.  You can set auto-filters that send mail into different "labels" much like Outlook filters
• You never have to worry about losing your data 
• You can be traveling and still have access to ALL your emails, clalendar, and documents.
• NEVER worry about hitting your email storage limit  (If you do hit a storage limitation, you can segregate your emails into different accounts.
• Best Mail search tool in the market.  Face it, Most email clients are plain bad at searching for thousands of emails for a keyword.  Naturally, Google does well at this. 
• When mail search actually works, you'd be surprised how OFTEN you use it. (which was not much with Outlook)
• Manage all your contacts, just like Outlook.
• Its Free.

 Gmail Tricks

One of the things I really don't like is spam;  Here is a quick way to defeat the gmail spam.

When you create a Gmail account, you actually get two email addresses - one is the regular @gmail.com while the second email address has @googlemail.com in the domain.

That means if your email address in Gmail is something like billgates@gmail.com, all email messages that are sent to billgates@googlemail.com will also be delivered to your own Gmail account. That's two for the price of one.

You can take advantage of these two domains so that less spam reaches your Gmail Inbox.  Give the @googlemail.com address to your close contacts (put that in the visiting card) while keep the @gmail.com address for public (put it on your blog). Then set a Gmail filter such that all email messages with @googlemail.com in the header go a special folder so you will never miss important email from close friends.

Source
http://www.labnol.org/internet/email/gmail-email-alias-two-separate-gmail-address/2388/

Gmail SSL Trick

Concerned with Gmail Privacy?

Here's a little tip for you…You can indeed use SSL (Secure Sockets Layer,  a protocol developed by Netscape for for transmitting private documents via the internet for your Gmail transactions)

This trick works great and is secure (at least, secure between your browser and the Google Server) Next time you connect to Gmail, click in the address bar and change "http://" to "https://" and press Enter/Return.

Now you're connected via SSL and if you then bookmark that "https" link as your starting point, it should keep you on the secure server for every interaction. Very nice if you're working on a public wifi network, for example.