Tim Bossie.com

How do you get the most out of your internet advertising? How do you make consistently more affiliate sales? How do you continually add new newsletter subscribers, recruit new prospects, add new clients, or build your online empire?

Ask yourself questions.

Not just the easy questions. Ask yourself the hard questions. The questions that you really don’t want to answer. Internet marketing, affiliate marketing, network marketing, whatever marketing you’re into is really a complex series of questions that you ask yourself in order to keep growing.

I am going to be doing a 10 post series on the questions you should be asking yourself when it comes to evaluating and making changes to your advertising campaign. They will be spread out over a few days and in small bite sized chunks.

These questions will be the exact ones I use when creating, and managing, my client’s advertising campaigns. Because of that I want to let you know a few things first;

1. I sit down on Monday morning and ask/answer these questions. You can do it anytime you want. I just feel that having a plan for the rest of the week works for me. The point to this is to pick a day/time that is best for you and do not miss it .

2. I don’t make excuses. Early on I did. I would tell myself all kinds of things in order to make it sound like the failures were not my fault. But, they were. Now I don’t make any excuses about why something is not working. I own up to it and then change it.

Internet Advertising Question #1

We’ll start it off in this post with a tough one.

What are your goals for the week with this particular ad campaign.

The very first question you ask yourself each week should be this one. This is your map for the rest of the week and is the starting point for the rest of your questions. It’s kind of like taking a trip. Even before you get the map out, pack your bags, or gas up the car you need to know where you’re going.

By asking yourself what your goals are for the week you’re finding out where you’re going.

Why weekly? Because smaller, bite sized goals are much easier to reach than the big, hairy, audacious goals. And it is what you will be using in order to continually make changes to your plan.

What does this usually look like?

For me it goes something like this…

First, I sit down with a blank pen and paper. I don’t use the computer for this because I like to just jot down all my thoughts, scratch things out, doodle, and write all over the paper. It helps with my creativity. Do you need to do this? No. But make sure that whatever you do to write down helps with your creative process.

Second, I begin to think (dream) about what I’d like to see by the end of the week. This basically means numbers.

Third, I begin to think much more rationally. I usually dream pretty high. With this step I usually bring down my expectations a little bit. I have gotten this down to a science now where I usually don’t change anything here as I’ve already done it in step 2. But, when starting out it’s a good habit to get into.

Fourth, I begin to break down each aspect of the current running ad campaign down to specific goals.
For instance that would mean that for a blog I would set down very specific goals like…

Write 12 blog posts.
Each blog post to have 8 comments.
3 of these comments from new visitors.
Have 12 new subscribers to RSS feed.
Gain 500 hits from blog to main product site.
Leave comments on 8 blogs a day.
Earn $15 a day from affiliate links/adsense/adnetworks on blog alone
Have 15 more back links to individual blog posts.
Work with/tweak two older blog posts for higher ranking.

You get the idea. I do this with each piece of the advertising pie so by the end I have a much clearer picture of what I want to achieve and can then move onto my actual planning.

Fifth, I challenge myself from week to week. It doesn’t do much good to expect the same results each week. That means you’re not growing and will probably fail very soon. This doesn’t mean that everything goes up each week. In reality what usually happens is I miss a goal by a little bit and then challenge myself the next week to meet it.

A few weeks ago while speaking to a client in one of our weekly evaluating meetings we both saw that my goal for 25 new subscribers to an autoresponder series didn’t happen. I was 6 off. What I did was challenge myself to actually reach 25 this next week. Of course I have my client hold me accountable and I keep a very close eye on the numbers. If things aren’t going as planned I then implement a new strategy, new ad, tweak the copywriting, ppc copy, or add a bonus… anything to reach that number.

I don’t take challenges lightly. Even from myself.

Keep Your Goals With You Wherever You Go

I keep my goals with me all the time, no matter where I am. It helps keep things in perspective. If I’m not reaching some of the things I wanted to achieve then keep my goals with me helps my mind to be always thinking of the ‘how’. Not that it’s always in the front of my mind, but it’s always there lurking in the background.

Ask yourself this question before doing anything else.

You can check out question #2 here.