In April 2006 my parents sold the house they had lived in for the past twelve years and purchased an historic mansion in Moose Jaw, Canada.

Originally built in 1908 by one of the wealthiest men in the city, the 3-story mansion has been a bed and breakfast since 2001.

Seeing that Moose Jaw had become a tourist hot spot over the past decade my parents intended to keep running it as a bed and breakfast.

I volunteered to help them with their marketing efforts and this case study outlines the things we did to improve the profitability of the business.

Increasing revenue for a bed and breakfast

There are three ways for bed and breakfasts to make more money:

• Increase the occupancy rate - Less empty rooms mean more money.
• Increase the amount paid per occupant or per room - When my parents bought the bed and breakfast the rooms were under priced for the market, so they have gradually increased the rates. My dad is a journeyman carpenter and has been making improvements to the property which will allow them to increase the rates further.
• Add more products / services - Since the property has a huge front yard with a large fountain and sits at the top of a hill overlooking the Moose Jaw river, my parents started offering Wedding services. They also sell gift certificates which are very popular during the holidays.

The Marketing Plan

The previous owners had created a website themselves and submitted it to a few bed and breakfast directories which worked surprisingly well. However, taking the bed and breakfast to the next level would require a marketing plan that included branding, professional web site, SEO, PPC, and off line marketing materials.

Branding

A logo or identity that is both professional and visually appealing can go along way in promoting a company. Often times a logo is the first impression that a potential customer has of a company. My talented grandmother did an amazing pencil-crayon drawing that we used for an icon in the logo and on all marketing materials including the website, business card and brochures.

Website

Since most people find and book a bed and breakfast through the Internet, our marketing strategy had to focus on creating an informative, functional and professional-looking website that converts traffic into sales. In November 2006 we created a web site that reflects the warmth, charm and history of the property. The Wakamow heights Bed & Breakfast web site includes:

• detailed information with multiple photos of each room/suite
• ability to check availability and make reservations online
• information and photos about the history of the house
• useful information about things to do in Moose Jaw
• a press section
• map and directions to the bed and breakfast
• comments from satisfied guests
• information on having weddings on the property

SEO

To build high-quality inbound links into the site, we submitted it to some Canadian bed and breakfast directories and a few local directories. We also traded links with a few bed and breakfasts. Our keyword research led us to optimize the site for ‘Moose Jaw Bed and Breakfast’ and similar terms. Currently the site ranks #1 in Yahoo! and MSN for ‘Moose Jaw Bed and Breakfast’ and is second in Google to the largest Canadian bed and breakfast directory which Wakamow Heights is listed in.

PPC

We implemented a Google Adwords Pay Per Click campaign that costs about 20 cents per click and puts us in the top spot for terms related to Moose Jaw Bed and Breakfast. Pay Per Click can be a very effective tool for local businesses considering how inexpensive it can be.

Off line Marketing Materials

The off line marketing materials consist of a two-sided business card with map and directions, and a rack card. The business card is given to guests to pass out to friends and family, and the rack card is put in brochure racks at many of the local business around Moose Jaw.

PR

There was never a public relations plan in place, but my parents have been very fortunate in that their bed and breakfast was featured in a few publications over the past couple months. Chatelaine Magazine included Wakamow Heights Bed & Breakfast in it’s Coast-To-Coast Travel Guide for the July 2007 issue, and the local newspaper did a story on area bed and breakfasts that featured their property first with two large photos including one on the cover. If you have a great product, people will talk about it.

Results

Wakamowheights.com had over 1500 unique visitors in July 2007 compared to 450 in July 2006, and the rate of occupancy is up atleast 150% from what it was a year ago. Implementing the Webervations software which allows users to check availability and make reservations online has been a huge time saver for my mom because she spends a lot less time on the phone taking reservations. This is an example of a simple marketing plan focused primarily on Internet marketing that has had excellent results.

Conclusion

I see a direct relationship between the rise in popularity of bed and breakfasts to the rise in popularity and use of the Internet. Without the Internet most bed and breakfasts would fail miserably, which is why there weren’t many of them 20 years ago. Effective Internet marketing can also allow small businesses like Wakamow Heights Bed & Breakfast to grow very quickly.

Next time you’re passing through Moose Jaw, Canada stop in at Wakamow Heights Bed & Breakfast for a good nights sleep, delicious breakfast and one of a kind experience.

7. Write what is true for you, and learn to live with the consequences.

If the stuff I’ve written on this site means I’ll never be able to run for a political office, I can live with that. I’m willing to write what is true for me, even if it goes against my social conditioning. Being honest is more important to me than being popular. But the irony is that because bold honesty is so rare among civilized humans, in the long run this may be the best traffic-building strategy of all.

People often warn me not to write things that might alienate a portion of my visitors. But somehow I keep doing the opposite and seeing traffic go up, not down. I don’t treat any subjects as taboo or sacred if they’re relevant to personal growth, and that includes diet and religion. It’s no secret that I’m a vegan ex-Catholic. Do I alienate people when I say that torturing and killing defenseless animals for food is wrong? Perhaps. But truth is truth. I happen to think it’s a bad idea to feed cows cement dust and bovine growth hormone, to pack live chickens into warehouses where the ammonia from their feces is strong enough to burn their skin off, and to feed 70% of our grain to livestock while tens of thousands of people die of hunger each day. I also think it’s a bad idea to pay people to perform these actions on my behalf. It really doesn’t matter to me that 999 people out of 1000 disagree with me. Your disagreement with me doesn’t change what went into producing your burger. It’s still a diseased, tortured, chemical-injected cow, one that was doomed to a very life because of a decision you made. And you’re still responsible for your role in that cow’s suffering whether you like it or not.

That last paragraph is a good example of the kind of stuff I write that makes people want to put me in a cage, inject me with hormones, and feed me cement dust. It wouldn’t surprise me terribly if that ends up being my fate.

I write what is true for me, regardless of public opinion. Sometimes I’m in the majority; sometimes I’m not. I’m fully aware that some of my opinions are unpopular, and I’m absolutely fine with that. What I’m not fine with is putting truth to a vote.

I take the time to form my own opinions instead of simply regurgitating what I was taught as a child. And I’m also well aware that there are people spending billions of dollars to make you think that a burger is not a very , diseased, tortured, chemical-injected cow. But I’m going to keep writing to help you remain aware of things like that, even though you may hate me for it. That defensiveness eventually leads to doubt, which leads to change and growth, so it’s perfectly fine. I’m good at dealing with defensiveness.

I don’t worry too much about hurting people’s feelings. Hurt feelings are a step in the right direction for many people. If I’m able to offend you so easily, to me that means you already recognize some truth in what I’ve written, but you aren’t ready to face it consciously yet. If you read something from me that provokes an emotional reaction, then a seed has already been planted. In other words, it’s already too late for you.

My goal isn’t to convince anyone of anything in particular. I’m not an animal rights activist, and I don’t have a religion to promote. My goal is to awaken people to living more consciously. This requires raising people’s awareness across all facets of their lives, so they can make the big decisions for themselves. It requires breaking social conditioning and replacing it with conscious awareness and intention. That’s a big job, but someone has to do it. And if I don’t do it, then I have to admit I’m just part of the problem like all the other hibernating bears.

A lot has been written about the importance of transparency in blogging, and truth is the best transparency of all. Truth creates trust, and trust builds traffic. No games, no gimmicks… just plain old brutal honesty. Even the people that say they hate you will still come back, and eventually those people will become your most ardent supporters. Even if they don’t agree with you, they’ll learn they can trust you and that your intentions are honorable, and trust is more important than agreement.

8. Treat your visitors like real human beings.

Even though I’m sitting at my computer writing this, seemingly alone, I know you’re a real human being reading it on the other end. My apologies to sentient androids who may be reading this years after it’s been written. You aren’t just a number in my web stats. Despite the technology involved and the time-space differential between my writing and your reading, there’s still a human-to-human connection between us that transcends time and space. And that connection matters to me. I feel its presence whenever I do my best writing.

While I imagine being on a stage in front of a million people when deciding which topic to write about, once I actually get going, I imagine having a one-on-one conversation with a friend. This means revealing some of myself and being honest, as the last two points already addressed, but it also means genuinely caring about you as a person. And that’s perhaps one of the best kept secrets of my success as a blogger. I actually care about helping you grow. I want you to become more conscious and aware. I want you to experience less fear in your life. And my concern for your well-being isn’t conditional upon you liking me.

I happen to think we have a lot more similarities than differences. Based on what I know about myself, I imagine you’d like your life to be better tomorrow than it was yesterday. I imagine you’d like to be happier, more fulfilled, and more at peace with yourself. I also imagine you’re living below your potential and could use some help overcoming fear and solving certain problems to enable you to tap more of that potential. And finally, I imagine you wouldn’t believe me if I said you can have it all for only $19.95 (as well you shouldn’t).

The reason I work so hard to create original content and then give it away for free is because I want to help as many people as possible. I genuinely care what happens to this beautiful planet and to the people who live here. It’s possible I actually value your life even more than you do. This is the kind of motivation that never wanes. I sometimes lose sight of it when I get caught up in the details, but the connection is always there, waiting for me to tap into it whenever I want. This provides me with a wellspring of creative ideas and an inexhaustible passion for contribution.

I don’t need to play stupid marketing and sales games with you. There’s nothing for you to buy here. Even if I add some products in the future, I’m not going to try to manipulate you into buying something you don’t need with a slew of false promises. I might make more money in the short-term by doing that, but it would sever our genuine connection, create a wall between us, and reduce the level of impact I’m able to have. Ultimately, that approach would lead to failure for me, at least in terms of how I define success. I can’t help you grow if I violate your trust.

I cannot force anyone to grow who doesn’t want to. But there are a lot of people on this planet who are now ready to let go of low-awareness living and start pushing themselves to the next level of human existence. And they need help to get there because it’s a difficult journey, and there are strong forces working against it.

Real human beings helping real human beings is ultimately what traffic growth is all about. That’s precisely what a link or a referral is. If you align yourself with the intention of genuinely helping people because you care, you’ll soon find yourself with an abundance of traffic.

9. Keep money in its proper place.

Money is important. Obviously I have bills to pay. Money pays for my computer, my high-speed internet connection, my house, and my food. I just returned yesterday from a vacation that money paid for. My wife and I had a great time partly because we didn’t have to worry about money at all on the trip. We did everything we wanted to do without being hampered by a lack of funds. And this web site paid for it.

It’s important that I generate some money from my work, but it’s not necessary that I extract every possible dollar. In fact, relative to its traffic levels, I’m seriously under-monetizing this site. But money is only a means to an end, not an end in itself. Making a positive contribution to the world is a lot more important to me than money. Money can be useful in achieving this objective, but human relationships are far more important. The funny thing is that the less I rely on money, the more of it I seem to have.

I’m already making more money than I need to pay my bills, and my income from this site keeps going up each month. If I simply keep doing what I’m doing, I’ll probably end up becoming fairly wealthy. But money is an extremely weak motivator for me. Very little of what I do today has a profit motive behind it except to the extent that money will fuel more important goals. That tends to confuse certain people because some of my decisions align with earning money, but many don’t. While I do consider myself an entrepreneur (at least it’s less isolating than “guru”), I only see money as a tool for enhancing and expanding my contribution.

While many entrepreneurs pursue money for the purpose of becoming wealthy, I chose a different route. I sought to earn money for the purpose of increasing my freedom. I don’t want to get myself stuck in a pattern of working for money, so I’m constantly turning down opportunities to make money that would restrict my freedom. For example, I don’t do any consulting or coaching. Consequently, my calendar contains very few fixed appointments. This doesn’t mean I’m idle. It just means I spend my time doing what I freely choose to do instead of what others would have me do. I require this level of flexibility to do my best work.

By paying close attention to how I earn money and not just how much I earn, I keep money in its proper place. This allows me to stay focused on my purpose without getting wrapped up in less important concerns like building a brand, closing sales, or doing phony marketing.

I dislike it when other people use one-dimensional sales and marketing tactics on me, so I avoid using these techniques on this site. I’ve sort of unplugged myself from the current capitalistic system and set up a side system of my own that I find much more congruent with conscious living. I would love for other people to have the same level of freedom I enjoy each day. I’m sure I’ll continue to improve my approach over time, but it’s working wonderfully so far. Imagine having a business with no products, no inventory, no sales, and no customers, but still generating an abundant positive cashflow.

Since the income generation is largely on autopilot, I can focus my time and energy on creating content instead of on doing marketing or trying to sell something. And being able to devote so much time to content creation without worrying how I’ll pay my bills makes it a lot easier to build high traffic.

Some business models make it very challenging to build traffic. You have to spend a lot of time and energy just on lead generation, and then maybe you try to monetize those leads by selling a product or service. It’s always an uphill struggle.

I give all my best content away for free. Word of mouth does the rest. So my traffic building strategy is more like flowing downstream. It hasn’t been a struggle for me at all. And once you have sufficient traffic, it isn’t that hard to monetize it without becoming an ogre.

We’ve all heard the expression, “Build a better mousetrap, and they’ll come.” And we’ve also heard marketing and sales people say that this is just plain wrong — you have to market and sell that mousetrap effectively too. I say they’re all wrong. My approach is the equivalent of, “Build a better mousetrap and give it away for free, and they’ll come — and they’ll bring friends too.”

10. If you forget the first nine suggestions, just focus on genuinely helping people, and the rest will take care of itself.

One thing that turns me off about typical self-help marketing is that authors and speakers often position themselves as if they’re the opposite of their audience. I’m successful and you’re not. I’m rich and you’re not. I’m fit and you’re not. You need me because something is lacking in your life, I have exactly what you lack, and if you pay me (and make me even richer and you poorer), I’ll show you how you can have it too. And if it doesn’t work for you, it just means you’re even more of an idiot than the people who provided my testimonials.

I’m sure you’ve heard this sort of nonsense many times before.

All of this I’ve-arrived-and-you-haven’t stuff is stupid. It suggests that life is about destinations and that once you’ve arrived, you’re done growing and can just relax and sip fruity drinks for the rest of your life. But there’s more to life than border crossings. If you go from single to married or from non-millionaire to millionaire, that’s fine and dandy. Crossing the border into parenthood was a big one for me. But that’s only one day of my life, and to be honest, I didn’t have much control over it except for a decision made nine-months earlier (and it seemed like a pretty attractive idea at the time). What about all those other days though?

Growing as a human being is something I work on daily. I’m deeply passionate about my own growth, so naturally I want to share this part of the journey with others. If I start marketing myself with the “I’m successful and you’re not approach,” I hope someone will come put me out of my misery, since that would mean I’m done growing and ready to die. I don’t expect to ever be done growing as long as I exist as a human being. There are always new distinctions to be made and new experiences to enjoy. And yes… plenty of mistakes to be made as well.

One of the great benefits of focusing on helping others is that it gets fear out of the way. Without fear you become free to just be yourself. You’re able to take intelligent risks and remain detached from any specific outcome because the journey is more important to you than the specific stops along the way. Personally it’s not the destinations that excite me but rather the unfolding process of discovery. I love the anticipation of wondering what lies around each new bend.

If we are to help each other, we need to be partners in the pursuit of growth, not opponents. So it makes no sense to put up fake walls between us. The ego needs walls to protect it, but if we can get past the fear-based needs of the ego, we’ll make a lot more progress.

There are plenty of things I could do with this site that would make me more money or grow traffic faster in the short-term, but I won’t do them because they’ll just put more distance between us. I’ll be on my side, you’ll be on your side, and we’ll each be slightly afraid of the other. I’ll be worried that maybe you won’t buy what I’m selling, and you’ll be worried about getting ripped off or taken advantage of. We’ll just be drinking yet another round of fear, which is exactly the opposite of what we need to grow.

One of my biggest challenges in life right now is figuring out how to help enough people switch their primary polarization from fear to love. Our emotions are an energy source for us (they drive our actions), and most of the world is still driven by fear energy. Watching TV news is a good example; we can actually feel energized by watching others suffer. Hurting animals is another example; we eat their fear for breakfast. But there’s another fuel for human consciousness, and perhaps the best way to describe it is unconditional love. This isn’t the squishy emotion of romantic love — it’s a sense of connection to everything that exists and a desire to serve the highest good of all. Unconditional love, when it becomes one’s primary fuel, cultivates fearlessness. In this state you still have the biological fight-or-flight response, but you aren’t driven by emotional worries like fear of failure or fear of rejection. You feel perfectly safe regardless of external circumstances. And when you have this feeling of unconditional safety, you’re truly free to be yourself, to embrace new experiences, and to grow at a very fast pace.

Personal growth is not a zero-sum game. If you grow as a human being, it doesn’t harm me. In fact, ultimately if all of us grow as individuals, it’s going to make this whole planet better for everyone. When enough people switch their primary polarization from fear to unconditional love, this planet will become a true paradise. That’s a good thing for all of us, one that’s more important than all the money in the world.

Perhaps you have a less ambitious goal for building web traffic than raising human consciousness and working towards world peace. That doesn’t matter. You can still make helping others your primary focus, and if you do that, you’ll find it relatively easy to build a high-traffic web site. If you align yourself with serving the highest good of all, you’ll receive plenty of help along the way, and best of all, you’ll deserve it.

Do your best to help your visitors out of genuine concern for their well-being, and they’ll help you build your traffic and even generate a nice income from it. It’s as simple as that.

From a blog

Since posting my 2005 traffic figures recently, I’ve received many questions about how I was able to start this web site from scratch and build its traffic to over 700,000 visitors per month (Jan 2006 projection) in about 15 months — without spending any money on marketing or promotion. Building a high-traffic web site was my intention from the very beginning, so I don’t think this result was accidental.

My traffic-building strategy isn’t based on tricks or techniques that will go out of style. It’s mainly about providing genuine value and letting word of mouth do the rest. Sadly, this makes me something of a contrarian today, since I happen to disagree with much of what I’ve seen written about traffic-building elsewhere. I do virtually no marketing for this site at all. My visitors do it for me, not because I trick them into doing it but simply because they want to.

Here are 10 of my best suggestions for building a high traffic web site:

1. Create valuable content.

Is your content worthy of being read by millions of people? Remember that the purpose of content is to provide value to others. Do you provide genuine value, and is it the best you’re capable of providing?

When I sit down to write, I sometimes imagine myself standing on an outdoor concert stage before an audience of a million people. Then I ask myself, “What shall I say to this audience of fellow human beings?” If a million people each spend five minutes on this site, that’s nearly 10 person-years total. I do my best to make my writing worthy of this differential. I don’t always succeed, but this is the mindset that helps me create strong content.

Think about the effect you want your writing to have on people. Since I write about personal growth, I want my writing to change people for the better. I want to expand people’s thinking, to raise their consciousness, and to help them eliminate fear from their lives. If my writing doesn’t change people’s thinking, actions, or awareness, then my value isn’t being transferred well enough.

When you focus on providing real value instead of churning out disposable content, your readers will notice. And they’ll refer others to your site — in droves. I typically see at least 10 new links to my site appearing each day (mostly via trackbacks but also via vanity feeds). I’m not going out and requesting those links — other bloggers just provide them, usually because they’re commenting on something I’ve written. Many fellow bloggers have also honored StevePavlina.com with a general recommendation for the entire site, not just links to my individual blog posts. It’s wonderful to see that kind of feedback.

Strong content is universally valued. It’s hard work to create it, but in the long run it generates lots of long-term referral traffic. I’d rather write one article I’m really proud of than 25 smaller posts. It’s been my experience that the best articles I write will outperform all the forgettable little posts I’ve made. Quality is more important than quantity. Quantity without quality, however, is easier, which is one reason so many people use that strategy. Ultimately, however, the Internet already contains more quantity than any one of us can absorb in our lifetimes, but there will always be a place for good quality content that stands out from the crowd.

If you have nothing of genuine value to offer to a large audience, then you have no need of a high-traffic web site. And if there’s no need for it, you probably won’t get it. Each time you write, focus on creating the best content you can. You’ll get better as you go along, but always do your best. I’ve written some 2000–word articles and then deleted them without posting them because I didn’t feel they were good enough.

2. Create original content.

Virtually everything on this site is my own original content. I rarely post blog entries that merely link to what others are writing. It takes more effort to produce original content, but it’s my preferred long-term strategy. I have no interest in creating a personal development portal to other sites. I want this site to be a final destination, not a middleman.

Consequently, when people arrive here, they often stick around for a while. Chances are good that if you like one of my articles, you may enjoy others. This site now has hundreds of them to choose from. You can visit the articles section to read my (longer) feature articles or the blog archives to see an easy-to-navigate list of all my blog entries since the site launched.

Yes, there’s a lot to read on this site, more than most people can read in a day, but there’s also a lot of value (see rule #1). Some people have told me they’ve read for many hours straight, and they leave as different people. I think anyone who reads my work for several hours straight is going to experience a shift in awareness. When you read a lot of dense, original content from a single person, it’s going to have an impact on you. And this content is written with the intention that it help you grow.

Although I’m not big on competing with others, it’s hard to compete with an original content site. Anyone can start their own personal development web site, but the flavor of this site is unique simply because no one else has had the exact same experiences as me.

While I think sites that mainly post content from others have the potential to build traffic faster in the beginning, I think original content sites have an easier time keeping their traffic, which makes for a more solid, long-term foundation. Not everyone is going to like my work, but for those that do, there’s no substitute.

3. Create timeless content.

While I do occasionally write about time-bound events, the majority of my content is intended to be timeless. I’m aware that anything I write today may still be read by people even after I’m dead. People still quote Aristotle today because his ideas have timeless value, even though he’s been dead for about 2300 years. I think about how my work might influence future generations in addition to my own. What advice shall I pass on to my great grandchildren?

I tend to ignore fads and current events in my writing. Wars, natural disasters, and corrupt politicians have been with us for thousands of years. There are plenty of others who are compelled to write about those things, so I’ll leave that coverage to them.

Will the content you’re creating today still be providing real value in the year 2010? 2100? 4000?

Writing for future generations helps me cut through the fluff and stay focused on the core of my message, which is to help people grow. As long as there are people (even if our bodies are no longer strictly biological), there will be the opportunity for growth, so there’s a chance that at least some of what I’m creating today will still have relevance. And if I can write something that will be relevant to future generations, then it will certainly be relevant and meaningful today.

In terms of traffic building, timeless content connects with people at a deeper level than time-bound content. The latter is meant to be forgotten, while the former is meant to be remembered. We forget yesterday’s news, but we remember those things that have meaning to us. So I strive to write about meanings instead of happenings.

Even though we’re conditioned to believe that news and current events are important, in the grand scheme of things, most of what’s covered by the media is trivial and irrelevant. Very little of today’s news will even be remembered next week, let alone a hundred years from now. Certainly some events are important, but at least 99% of what the media covers is irrelevant fluff when viewed against the backdrop of human history.

Ignore the fluff, and focus on building something with the potential to endure. Write for your children and grandchildren.

4. Write for human beings first, computers second.

A lot has been written about the optimal strategies for strong search engine rankings in terms of posting frequency and post length. But I largely ignore that advice because I write for human beings, not computers.

I write when I have something meaningful to say, and I write as much as it takes to say it. On average I post about five times per week, but I have no set quota. I also write much longer entries than most bloggers. No one has ever accused me of being too brief. My typical blog entry is about 1500–2000 words, and some (like this one) are much longer. Many successful bloggers would recommend I write shorter entries (250–750 words) and post more frequently (20x per week), since that creates more search engine seeds for the same amount of writing. And while I agree with them that such a strategy would generate more search engine traffic, I’m not going to take their advice. To do so would interfere too much with my strategy of delivering genuine value and creating timeless content. I have no interest in cranking out small chunks of disposable content just to please a computer. Anyone can print out an article to read later if they don’t have time to read it now and if the subject is of genuine interest to them. Part of the reason I write longer articles is that even though fewer people will take the time to read them, for those that do the articles are usually much more impactful.

Because of these decisions, my search engine traffic is fairly low compared to other bloggers. Google is my #1 referrer, but it accounts for less than 1.5% of my total traffic. My traffic is extremely decentralized. The vast majority of it comes from links on thousands of other web sites and from direct requests. Ultimately, my traffic grows because people tell other people about this site, either online or offline. I’ve also done very well with social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg.com, and reddit.com because they’re based on personal recommendations. I’ve probably had about a dozen articles hit the del.icio.us popular list within the past year, definitely more than my fair share.

I prefer this traffic-building strategy because it leaves me less vulnerable to shifts in technology. I figure that Google ultimately wants to make it easy for its visitors to find valuable content, so my current strategy should be in alignment with Google’s long-term strategy. My feeling is that Google would be well-served by sending more of its traffic here. But that alignment simply arises from my focus on providing value first and foremost.

5. Know why you want a high-traffic site.

I write because my purpose in life is to help people become more conscious and aware — to grow as human beings. I don’t have a separate job or career other than this. Because my work is driven by this purpose, I have a compelling reason to build a high-traffic web site, one that aligns with my deepest personal values. More web traffic means I can have a bigger impact by reaching more people. And over the course of the next few decades, this influence has the potential to create a positive change that might alter the future direction of human civilization. Most significantly, I want to help humanity move past fear and for us to stop relating to each other through the mechanisms of fear. If I fail, I fail. But I’m not giving up no matter how tough it gets.

Those are big stakes, and it might sound like I’m exaggerating, but this is the level at which I think about my work today. Everything else I do, including building a high traffic web site, is simply a means to that end. Today I’m just planting seeds, and most of them haven’t even sprouted yet. A high traffic web site is just one of the sprouts that came about as a result of pursuing the purpose that drives me. But it is not an end in itself.

What will you do if you succeed in building a high-traffic web site? If you someday find yourself in the privileged position of being able to influence millions of people, what will you say to them? Will you honor and respect this position by using it as a channel to serve the highest good of all, or will you throw that opportunity away to pursue your own fleeting fame and fortune while feeding your audience disposable drivel?

Although I launched this web site in October 2004, I’ve been writing articles since 1999, and feedback has allowed me to understand how small slices of my writing have affected certain people in the long run. After reading something I’ve written, people have quit their jobs, started their own businesses, changed religions, and ended relationships. While some people might find this level of impact ego-gratifying, for me it intensifies my feeling of personal responsibility for my writing. I’ve seen that I’m able to have an impact on people, so I damned well better make it a good one.

This “why” is what drives me. It’s what compels me to go to my computer and write something at 3am and not stop until 10am. I get inspired often. The #1 reason I want more traffic is that it will allow me to help more people. That’s where I direct my ambition for this site, and consequently I’m extremely motivated, which certainly plays a key role in taking action.

6. Let your audience see the real you.

My life and my writing are intricately intertwined, such that it’s impossible to separate the two. When someone reads this web site, they’ll eventually come to know a great deal about me as a person. Usually this creates a skewed and inaccurate impression of who I am today because I change a lot over time — I’m not the same person I was last year — but it’s close enough. Getting to know me makes it easier for people to understand the context of what I write, which means that more value can be transferred in less time.

I’ve told many personal stories on this site, including my most painful and difficult experiences. I don’t do this to be gratuitous but rather because those stories help make a point — that no matter where you find yourself today, you always have the opportunity to grow in some small way, and no matter how small those changes are, they’re going to add up over time to create massive lifelong growth. That’s a lesson we all need to remember.

When I find ways to turn some of my darkest experiences into lessons that might help others in similar situations, it actually transforms those painful memories into joyful ones. They take on new meaning for me, and I can see that there was a positive reason I had to endure such experiences, one that ultimately serves the highest good of all. Oddly, I now find that it was my darkest times that help create the most light for others.

With respect to privacy, I don’t really care much for it. I do respect other people’s right to privacy, so when people tell me personal stories via email, I don’t turn around and re-post them to my blog. But I’m OK with being rather un-private myself. The need for privacy comes from the desire to protect the ego, which is a fear-driven desire, and fear is something I just don’t need in my life. My attitude is that it’s perfectly OK to fail or to be rejected publicly. Trying to appear perfect is nothing but a house of cards that will eventually collapse.

I think allowing people to know the real me makes it possible to build a relationship with my audience that’s based on intimacy and friendship. I dislike seeing people putting me on too much of a pedestal and using labels like “guru” or “overachiever.” Such labels create distance which makes communication harder. They emphasize our differences instead of our similarities. Communication between equals — between friends — is more effective.

More genuine communication means better connections with your audience, which means more repeat traffic and more referral traffic. This isn’t a manipulative game though, and excessive or overly dramatic self-disclosure for the purpose of linkbaiting will only backfire. Your reasons for storytelling must be to benefit your audience. The traffic benefits are a positive side effect.

Collect from a blog

By Peter DeLegge

“Blogs are the most important thing to online marketing since sliced bread.” “Blogs may have their place… but it’s not in direct marketing.” With such disparate views, whom do you believe? The blog consultants? Or established “old school” marketing mavens?

Barraged with hype, marketers can have a tough time deciding whether blogs should be part of their arsenal. Listen to the blog consultants? But who profits from the blog phenomenon? Are we talking “opportunistic agenda” or “objective perspective”?

How about the marketing experts? Is it fair to say that blogging doesn’t belong in a direct or business-to-business marketing program? Why do so many veterans bristle at the idea of blogs? Is it simply because of imagined shortcomings? Or do blogs stump an “old school” sensibility that seeks a precedent for comparison? 

A decade ago, with the dawning of the commercial web, marketers faced a similar dilemma. One faction wrote the web off as negligible, while another took to the barricades, waving the web banner and proclaiming the demise of other channels. As we learned, new vehicles do not necessarily replace old ones — in fact, they may even supplement them.

“Okay,” you say, “history is well and good. But what happens in the next senior-management meeting when the CEO asks, ‘Does blogging belong in our marketing communications program?’ What do I tell him?”

First, you can tell him blogs are not an effective direct marketing tool. I doubt they ever will be. Blogging doesn’t allow you to precisely target audiences or permit any discernable control over who sees your message. However…

Blogs have already proven useful in publicity campaigns, generating word-of-mouth and, in some cases, media attention. CPG marketers have made the most effective use of commercial blogs, with highly imaginative efforts attracting throngs of consumers. There’s no question these blogs have affected consumer bonding with brands.

Blogs can also play an important role in business-to-business marketing. Management gurus, public speakers and prominent business leaders can wield some mean business-to-business blogs. Tom Peters, for one, has a very successful blog. For Peters’ fans, this is a godsend — access to Peter’s daily thought process. Of course, the more people who clamor to glean Peters’ next idea, the more likely his next seminar will sell out and his next tome will fly off the bookshelves.  

Are blogs right for every company or brand? No.

Are bloggers, and especially blog consultants, over-hyping blogs? Absolutely.  

The first group is merely excited about technology. The second benefits from getting businesspeople to turn off their logic and open their pocket books. The unfortunate backlash — wholesale discrediting of blogs by critics who have either never used them effectively or never used them altogether.

A brave new nirvana? Or just a passing fad? The importance of blogging shouldn’t be overstated or ignored. (Though, currently, the most interesting aspect of blogs is social, not commercial.) Blogs are unique. They aren’t direct mail, telemarketing, direct response TV, e-commerce or e-mail marketing … and that’s fine. Defining what they aren’t doesn’t diminish their potential in the hands of a smart marketer.

by Peter De Legge

With all the attention Amazon.com and other consumer Web sites receive, one would think the big money is in business-to-consumer e-commerce. The real story is that business-to-business e-commerce is a much larger market. Forrester research estimates that b-to-b e-commerce for 1998 was $43 billion, or more than five times b-to-c. What’s more, Forrester projects that b-to-b e-commerce will reach $1.3 trillion by 2003. The Aberdeen Group estimates actual b-to-b commerce at ten to twenty times that of b-to-c commerce. A survey by Cahner’s Publishing found that “61% of manufacturing professionals have made a purchase as a result of seeing a product or service on the Internet.” Their 1998  Internet-influenced purchasing increased 13% from the prior year. It’s very clear that the Internet will not soon be an important part of business-to-business marketing, it already is.

Still, many business sectors have yet to embrace e-commerce. Experts are now estimating the cost of putting together a serious, yet status quo, e-commerce Web site at around $1 million. A cutting edge site is much more costly. Clearly, this figure has kept many businesses from moving their Web efforts from the realm of brochureware to become a more serious part of their business.

The potential of b-to-b e-commerce to cut costs in the supply chain is significant — in some cases, e-commerce has the potential to  eliminate the need for certain channel members completely. E-commerce even allows some manufacturers of consumer products who have traditionally sold to retailers to sell directly to consumers, but this, of course, can greatly upset retailers and others in the value chain. A recent memo from Home Depot to its retail goods suppliers warned them that if they sell their goods directly on the Internet, Home Depot will stop doing business with them — clearly illustrating some of the temptation and dangers of e-commerce for manufacturers who currently sell to retailers.

Another strong reason why business-to-business e-commerce is certain to grow is its ability to save money for both the buyer and the seller. According to Giga Information Group, by 2002,  e-commerce will save businesses $1.25 billion a year (companies saved approximately $17.6 billion in 1998; US companies saved about $15.2 billion).

But the real killer for companies not embracing e-commerce may be time. Companies who are late to embrace e-commerce may be ruined by e-commerce savvy competitors. The time it takes to develop and implement e-commerce systems can be lengthy. A recent example of the consequences of being too late comes from a Fortune 100 manufacturer of consumer electronics. Recently, the manufacturer told its suppliers that if they do not presently have e-commerce capabilities they will soon be eliminated as suppliers. Companies without current e-commerce capabilities didn’t even get the chance to adapt — they were blindsided. Why did this manufacturer do this? Because they realized that implementing e-commerce systems is a very long and costly process that can be filled with setbacks — they knew that they would lose potential cost savings in the process.

It is certain that traditional value-added network (VAN)-based EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) will soon be replaced by Internet-based EDI. In fact, Internet-based EDI may be one of the chief factors driving b-to-b e-commerce initiatives. The cost efficiencies of replacing VAN-based EDI with Internet-based EDI is simply too attractive on too many levels to be ignored. For example, VAN based EDI is cost prohibitive for many small businesses, while Internet-based EDI is relatively inexpensive. Consequently, Internet-based EDI will be the technology that levels the playing field for many small businesses.

For many companies, it appears that the largest factors impeding the progress of b-to-b e-commerce are a lack of management commitment, high start-up costs and a lack of technology standards. It seems almost certain that competitive pressures will soon dictate that e-commerce is not simply an option but a standard part of doing business, just as the telephone, fax and e-mail have all become standards. 

So welcome to the e-commerce revolution. The overblown hype about the Internet is now clearing and the real revolution has begun. Unquestionably, every company that implements e-commerce will take risks and make mistakes. However, no mistake is worse than assuming that this revolution will not affect your industry — because it will eventually touch just about every industry in some way.

Peter De Legge is an Internet Marketing Consultant and Developer with over 10 years of Marketing/Marketing Communications experience, primarily in the business to business arena. Prior to the advent of the commercial Internet, Mr. De Legge worked mostly with print advertising, direct mail, trade shows and collateral pieces. He presently lives in Chicago and handles both business-to-business and business-to-consumer Web site development and strategy for a number of companies. To learn more about his services, visit his Web site at http://www.businessmarketing.net.

by Peter DeLegge

Whether you have recently been given responsibility for getting your business on the Web or to handle a pre-existing Web site, there are some general truths (at least in this consultant’s eyes) that you should strongly consider. Do not consider the Internet simply as a place to put your brochures in electronic form. Do not make the mistake of treating the Internet as if it is simply an advertising medium. The Web has more in common with the telephone than print. It is different from traditional media in many respects. Even Internet advertising requires a different approach than off-line advertising. Exploit the Web’s unique qualities to provide a richer experience for customers and prospects.   

Find out what your competitors are doing on the Web. Spend a few days checking out how your competitors are using the Web. Analyze each site. How does the site help tell the world about that company’s products or services; is it easy to use; is it enjoyable to use; does it add value to the company’s customer service; is it integrated with the company’s other marketing efforts.

Create an Internet business plan and live it. Before starting your company’s Web site project, determine measurable goals and objectives for your company’s site, establish milestones. Make them both qualitative and quantitative. This may sound obvious, but planning is one of the most neglected areas of corporate Web site management. Your Internet business strategy should be an extension of your company’s existing business strategy and well-integrated with everything your company does off-line.

Don’t be inconsistent with your off-line brand. Make sure your Web site experience is consistent with your brand image. For instance, is your brand known for superior engineering and being easy-to-use? Make sure your Web site experience is consistent. A recent study found that corporate Web site email responses are highly informal and unbranded.   

Email marketing works, but be careful. Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to stay in touch with customers and prospects online. It can also be effective as a direct-marketing device. My advice to B2B marketers, in most cases, do not rent email lists, build your own. Do not rent out your list. Never spam, under any circumstances. Let email subscribers know in advance how often you will send messages and what type of content they can expect. Make messages as targeted as possible; relevancy keeps people listening.

Be sure your Web site is integrated with your company’s other marketing activities. Don’t make the mistake some traditional companies do and create an Internet effort that is disconnected with your company’s off-line efforts. Your Web site should be connected with your company’s off-line efforts. This means more than throwing the company Web address in your ads.

Segment and target. Even without sophisticated personalization technology, the Web allows you to easily target your messages, making them more relevant to users. Find out who they are in the least intrusive way possible and then talk to them more personally. 

Use your company’s Web site to enhance customer service — especially for prospects who may be researching. The Internet allows your company to stay in touch with its customers and provide them with answers to questions they are likely to ask. Make sure your site makes it easy for your customers to find what they want and communicate with your company. A good corporate Web site helps current customers and develops new customers too. Consider real-time online help systems.

Make your site an information resource for its target markets. Becoming a trusted resource of high quality information for your customers is of tremendous value to your business, in addition, it can help win your company free press and word-of-mouth/mouse.

Do user testing. If you have the budget, do usability testing prior to launching your Web site. Bring in an expert usability group — don’t merely rely on the company that developed your site, bring in another, unrelated usability testing firm. If you cannot afford to do formal testing with a usability group, I would recommend you bring in a usability expert and afterwards, test with several of your customers.

Care about privacy. Even though most users don’t bother to read privacy policies, studies show they do care. My guess is that this will only increase over time. Make sure you have a good privacy policy and a privacy statement on your site that is easy to find and customer friendly. Build your privacy policy around your customers’ concerns. When it comes to email, never send out unsolicited email (spam), it not only damages your reputation and could get you into hot water, it also has extremely low response rates.    

Be ready for inquiries. Most corporate Web sites are horrible about responding to email inquiries, don’t let yours be one. Also, be ready for international business inquiries, even if it means telling visitors you don’t handle out of country orders.

Outsource areas your company does not have expertise. If you plan on getting real value out of your Web site, outsourcing its development to the right firm is critical. I would recommend that you find a firm with marketing experience, not just designers and computer programmers. Remember that a designer’s expertise is in design, a programmer’s expertise is in programming and an Internet marketer’s expertise is in Internet marketing.

Keeping up with the rapid changes of Internet marketing is a full time job. Find an expert and use him or her. Concentrate your efforts on running your business or handling your professional responsibilities.

Promote Your Web site. There is a popular misconception that Web sites do not need to be promoted. Consider that some of the Web’s biggest successes spend about 75% of their advertising budgets on non-Internet media. Having a Web site is like having a toll-free number that’s not listed in every phone book…you need to work hard to drive visitors to your Web site. As with any other media, it costs money to make it a success. Plaster your Web site address (URL) everywhere you can — at trade show appearances, on business cards, stationary, in ads and everywhere else you can think of.

Use Internet advertising where it makes sense. Internet advertising has been pushed as a direct-response device, but the B2B process is far more complex and longer than with B2C. Where a B2C ad may attempt to get a consumer to make a purchase, this is not realistic for high-ticket B2B items. Instead, B2B marketers should consider using Internet advertising to reach targets that regularly use the Internet at the places they often go with ads that feature things like white papers, research, Web seminars and other information that is likely to be of strong interest to prospects.

Give it away free. For B2B marketers, the Internet provides a great opportunity to provide your target markets with high quality intellectual capital that can help position your company as a thought leader in the minds of your target markets.

Continuously analyze your Web traffic and other e-metrics to learn and improve. Find out how people are getting to your site and what they’re doing once they get there. Any good Web site statistics software package will tell you how many people are going to your site, what pages they’re viewing, what search engines they’re coming from and more. If you’re using a Web development firm, make sure that they  review this with you on no less than a quarterly basis. Find out what’s working and what’s not. Redesign your site to make it more effective for your users and for reaching your desired objectives (e.g., get leads, sales, etc.). Integrate your on-line and off-line information to provide a more complete picture of customers and prospects.   

Peter De Legge is an Internet Strategy and Marketing Consultant with over 10 years of marketing and e-business experience, primarily in the business to business arena. He has held marketing, advertising and e-business strategy positions from medium size to the Fortune 250. To learn more about his services, visit his Web site at http://www.businessmarketing.net. 

Doing business on the Web doesn’t spare you from many of the same laws and customs that govern businesses in the physical world. You must pay especially close attention to trademark law, which governs disputes between business owners over the names, logos and trademarks that identify their goods and services in the marketplace. Applied to Web businesses, trademark law determines when the use of a particular Internet domain name infringes someone else’s trademark.

The two most fundamental rules of trademark law are:

• You can’t use a name, logo or domain name that might confuse customers about the source of your goods or services.
• You can’t use a name, logo or domain name that invokes a famous product or service, even if customers wouldn’t be confused.

Opening Your Doors to the World

Until several years ago, only companies doing business on a national or regional level needed to be concerned about trademark law. A local business could reasonably expect its marketing activities to be limited to a neighborhood, town, city or county. As long as the name used by the business to identify itself in the marketplace didn’t seriously conflict with names used by other local businesses, there was little likelihood of customer confusion and so, little likelihood of legal conflict.

Today, the core concept of “local” has all but disappeared for many types of businesses. When you create a Web page, you enter a commercial realm that is in one stroke local, national and international. Local customers can search you out, but so can anyone anywhere in the U.S. or the world who has a computer and an Internet connection. Suddenly, you must pay attention to how your business name–or the names of products you are offering–fit within the vast sea of names that is the new world marketplace.

What’s in a Name

The first trademark issue to arise when you create a Web page has to do with the name you give your Web site–called your Internet domain name. It’s the unique part of your Internet address (Universal Resource Locator or URL). The Nolo Press URL, for instance, is http://www.nolo.com. The last part–nolo.com–is the domain name. Naturally, most businesses want the domain name for their Web site to be the same as their business name, so that customers can easily find their sites.

Here’s where you can inadvertently court trademark trouble. If you choose a domain name that is the same or similar to a business name that is already in use as a trademark anywhere in the country (in physical or virtual space), you could find yourself in a trademark infringement dispute. If you are offering goods or services on your website, you could even be sued.

The entity responsible for assigning domain names does not check to see if a requested domain name violates an existing trademark. It is concerned only with whether the name is already taken as a domain name. In other words, being assigned the domain name you request says nothing about whether it will conflict with an existing trademark. If it is the same or similar to a famous mark or is likely to cause customers to confuse your site with the business or products carrying the existing mark, you could be in violation of trademark law.

If you do pick a domain name that creates a trademark conflict, you will most likely lose the name. Given the energy that goes into building domain name recognition, this could be a major blow to your business. Here’s what could happen:

• If your domain name prevents the owner of a registered trademark from using its mark as its domain name, the owner of the registered mark may be able to cause your domain name to be deregistered. If that happens, you can’t use it anymore.
• If your domain name is the same or similar to an existing famous mark, the mark’s owner may file a lawsuit preventing any further use of your domain name, even if customers wouldn’t likely be confused. For example, if you decide to call your health food website foramazons.com, the real amazon.com could probably force you to stop using the name, simply because it calls amazon.com to mind.
• If your domain name conflicts with an existing mark and will likely lead to customer confusion between your business or products and those offered by the mark’s owner, you may be forced to stop using the name. And if your infringement is judged to be willful, you might have to both compensate the mark’s owner for any losses and pay thousands of dollars in statutory damages.

Avoiding Trouble

Before choosing a domain name, it is wise to conduct what’s known as a trademark search. A trademark search hunts for any trademarks, federally registered or not, that conflict with your proposed domain name.

You can do your own trademark search at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Website, www.uspto.gov. Or you can pay someone to do it for you. One good trademark searcher is the Sunnyvale Center on Innovation, Invention and Ideas at www.sci3.com.

If possible conflicts turn up, use a variant of the golden rule. Do not use an existing mark as your domain name if use of the mark would seriously tick you off if you were the mark’s owner.

PLEASE NOTE The information presented at MarketingToday is not legal advice, MarketingToday is not in the business of legal information, we are not lawyers, just publishers. We provide this information to help you understand the issues that we believe marketers should be aware of. We recommend that you consult a qualified attorney who specializes in trademarks, copyrights, advertising, intellectual property and the Internet for your questions or problems, we do.

by Peter De Legge

Perhaps marketers should have mandatory training from the Boy Scouts, where the motto is “be prepared.” It is a lesson Encyclopedia Britannica is learning the hard way. The Encyclopedia Britannica has long been highly regarded for their top notch product, but the company has historically been slow to embrace technology. They were late to get their encyclopedia into the CD-ROM market and late to put together a significant Web site effort. So their recent announcement to put their entire encyclopedia online for free created a giant media buzz.

You’re probably thinking to yourself, wow, the opportunity every business with a significant Web presence dreams of — tons of free publicity for a site launch.

The problem is, the folks at Britannica didn’t plan on their enormous success. And on the Internet, there is no forgiveness when it comes to significant increases or “spikes” in Web site traffic. 

Britannica.com’s servers were simply unprepared to handle the traffic and the company soon took their site down. It was a disaster.

Read this excerpt posted on the Britannica.com home page (at the time of publishing this article, the only available page on the britannica.com Web site):

“The launch of Britannica.com last week created such an enormous volume of traffic that we were simply unable to handle the demand. We have been working around the clock to correct the problem. Our teams have been busy unpacking crates, installing hardware, configuring software and boosting capacity worldwide.

What’s more, after evaluating the situation we have decided to not only boost our capacity several-fold; but redesign our system to meet the extraordinary demands placed on it. We’re taking this extraordinary step to ensure that we can meet the demands of our users going forward.

We apologize to everyone who has been unable to access Britannica.com. Soon we will be able to make the Britannica.com site available once again. In the meantime, I ask for your patience as we work to ensure that our systems around the world can meet the enormous demand for Britannica.com.”

What can marketers from companies big and small learn from this? First, you need to be ready for spikes in Internet traffic; Britannica blew an incredible opportunity because they were not prepared. Marketing and IT departments need to work closely and make sure that everyone in IT and involved in the technical side of the company’s Web site is aware of any potential large traffic spikes. If your company is going to have an executive appear on national television program such as an interview on CNN or Nightline, have a plan in place and get things ready long before the event. Experienced consultants should be brought in…experience is paramount.

Fortunately for Britannica, they are very likely to recover. But will Britannica receive the same amount of publicity for the re-launch of their site? If this same thing were to happen to a significant e-commerce or stock trading site it would have done serious damage to the company’s stock price, reputation and caused immediate losses in the millions.

Internet marketers don’t only need to be guerillas, they should also be good scouts.

Peter De Legge is the publisher and editor of Marketing Today. He has more than 15 years marketing and advertising experience that includes holding  various marketing management posts at several corporations and consulting to numerous companies, from start-ups to Fortune 500’s, in the areas of Internet Marketing, integrated marketing and Internet strategy. E-business efforts and Web sites Peter has been a part of have won the praise of leading marketing and e-business experts, including being selected being selected among E-Week’s “Top 500 E-business Innovators of 2000.” Peter’s MarketingToday.com Web site has received  the praise of e-marketing innovators like Seth Godin and industry publications such as Folio Magazine,  which recently selected the site as one of several “Web sites worth watching.” To learn more about Peter De Legge visit:  http://www.businessmarketing.net or e-mail marketingtoday@usa.net.