I just got back from Paul Gorman’s “Leave Them in the Dust” seminar.
As usual it was an awesome weekend spent in the company of an amazing group of people. And the range of strategy, detailed tactics and depth of content Paul covered was quite staggering.
As someone who has been on the ‘Paul Gorman Roadshow’ for more than 4 years now (starting with me attending his £35,000 week-long “Business Millionaire” seminar in Brighton in December 2003), I’m especially sad there won’t be any more marketing seminars.
Paul changed my life. And I do mean that quite literally.
If you’ve not heard about Paul, you can still buy his books and exceptional home-study programmes from www.PaulGorman.com. All strongly recommended.
As mentioned last week, at Paul’s request I also spoke at the event. I generally avoid public speaking for a number of reasons, so on the basis “repetition is the mother of all skill” my public speaking style isn’t particularly refined.
However, based on feedback I’m relieved to say it seems my 2 hour talk on Internet Marketing was well received. (Nobody fell asleep or left the room… always a good sign.)
The first point I raised in my talk was to not listen to anyone who says the first promotional tactic to do after launching a new web site is to “pay for search engine optimisation to get it listed on Google”.
I’ve been saying this for years — there are so many less risky and much faster ways of getting gargantuan streams of traffic (qualified prospects) onto web sites without risking lots of money on SEO (search engine optimisation).
SEO should come later once the site’s proven it can convert visitors into customers, definitely not before.
Then I got stuck into landing pages… spent the rest of the 2 hours covering sales-lead generation and customer acquisition, and how to split-path and multi-variate test. I think it all went OK based on post-talk feedback.
And after my talk, the first three business owners who I spoke with all said the same thing. They had each invested many thousands of pounds — and lots of faith — in outsourced search engine optimisation services… and had NO return on investment.
Literally, not one of them had a single extra sale or enquiry, and their sites are nowhere to be found on Google. Shocking.
In fact one business had even been advised by their web company to NOT split-test their Google Adwords, which must qualify as “The World’s Worst Internet Marketing Advice” I’ve ever heard.
Split-testing Google Adwords — which are the small ‘Sponsored’ adverts you see at the top and right side of Google’s search results) is not only quick and easy but is also one of the fastest ways of lowering your bid price.
These business owners had been given dreadful, dreadful advice. (Liz ∓ Lucy: Get a new agency to handle your Google Adwords as a matter of urgency… the ones you have will be costing you a fortune.)
I also discovered very few business owners in the room had even heard about, let alone use, landing pages, split-path or multi-variate tested landing pages, or even able to track their web statistics.
It’s just not common knowledge, which is a shame because all of those methodologies have been available for years now, and the software required is incredibly inexpensive these days (or even free, like Google Analytics for example.)
So… it appears I’m still on track.
I was worried it was getting dated, but it’s obvious the advice in my now 2 year old book is still as fresh and valid today as it was when I wrote it back in 2005. There is as much need for business owners to get this advice and apply the tactics to their web sites today as there was back then.
If you were at the event, it was nice meeting you and I hope we get the opportunity to meet again someday.
But whether or not you were at the event, I look forward to using my blog to explain what I didn’t have time to cover in my 2 hour slot, starting tomorrow with split-testing Google Adwords. (Liz & Lucy especially… get ready to grab a pen and take notes! 
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-Ed.
