Aligned Marketing Blog

Crush the Competition Contest

You can Win prizes valued at over $1,500.00!

Here are the prizes:

• A 1-hour Crush the Competition Session with me. In this session we’ll develop three new ways you can clearly differentiate yourself from your competition. In addition, you’ll receive a condensed version of my sales coaching webinar, including a 30-minute follow up session and a signed copy of my book, Communication Wins.

• A free professionally designed, customized page for Facebook, Twitter or YouTube from M3-SocialMindz (www.M3socialmindz.com), a leader in SEO, PPC and social media marketing. A professionally designed social media page sets you apart from the competition and is a great way to project your brand into online communities and generate new sales leads.

• A video Holiday Card (click on "Holiday Card" to see samples) from ImigPro, just like this one: www.imigpro.com. If you can’t get to their Charlotte studio, email your video or images and they’ll do the rest. This is a unique way to stand out in a  crowd and competitive world. Managers and executives can use the video-card to both extend a holiday greeting and rally-the-troops for 2010.

• A copy of Gary Vaynerchuk’s new book, Crush It!. Gary was using the power of video, social media and the web before most people knew they existed. In Crush It! you learn what Gary has to say about social media, why storytelling is your most powerful marketing tool and multi-channel monetizing. Gary has appeared on CNN, Fox News, The Today Show, and The Ellen Degeneres Show. 

How you’ll Win:
It’s easy. Write one paragraph, at least three sentences, describing what you like best about my interview with Gary and post it here, at www.aligned-marketing.com website blog page (it’s free advertising), under Comments (email address required to win). Then email your paragraph and additional comments to me at: shartkopf@aligned-marketing.com.

Bonus:
Those who tell me what you plan to do with what you learned from the interview will receive special recognition (it's a surprise!) for contributing to the community.  

Contest Rules and Prizes: 

• One winner will be chosen at random to receive our Grand Prize - the Crush the Competition Session, signed copy of my book, free professionally design social media page from M3SocialMindz and Holiday video-card from ImigPro and copy of Gary’s book.
• Five winners will be selected to receive the Crush the Competition Session.
• Ten winners will receive a personalized autographed copy of my book, Communication Wins.
• This contest runs from Tuesday, October 13, 2009, through Friday October 30, 2009.
• Winners will be notified by email on Friday, November 6, 2009.

Good luck!
Steve

This blog has always been about helping others. We report, offer free marketing tips and share best practices. Of course, it's indirect marketing done to promote goodwill. It's also good citizenship, done to improve the community.

I'm going to be selfish today. There's a lot happening at Aligned Marketing. Here's a partial update:

• We continue to sign up clients for search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) projects. We recommend both because SEO is like farming, it produces results (food) in weeks or months, and PPC is like hunting, Bang!, dinner. A friend of mine used SEO & PPC to grow a distributor’s online sales from $72K/month to an impressive $1.0M+ per month and counting. What recession? Smart companies are getting off the sidelines. There are still markets out there with unmet needs. Someone is going to serve them, why not you?
• We team up with other companies to enhance our capabilities without adding fixed cost. One of those companies just completed a landmark four year study in collaboration with the University of Michigan. Over 200 companies participated in interviews and surveys that included manufacturer and distributor sales reps as well as industrial buyers. They observed over 1,000 live sales calls. From that research they developed a new approach to selling, an actual best practice process. The field test data is compelling and, I believe, can be a game-changer with the right commitment from senior management.
• We launched a 10-day social media campaign for Aligned Marketing and increased visits to our website by 343% in the first week. Because of the way we structured the program visits will continue at the new higher level for several weeks and should remain well above our prior level into the future, assuming we don’t do anything stupid...stayed tuned.
• Gary Vaynerchuk is a top-5 Internet celebrity who has been on Fox News, The Today Show, CNN, Conan O’Brien and several other shows. He reads my blog…surprised me too. Anyway, on October 13 his new book, Crush It!, goes on sale and as part of his promotion tour I’ll be interviewing Gary using video over the Internet. I’m excited to finally communicate with Gary live, not through email, and the technology we’ll be using is very cool. More to come.
• My wife and I attended a convention for web-geeks in Orlando last week. There were over 400 people in attendance. While I didn’t get to speak one of the presenters put my picture up on a slide and recommended that everyone read my book. I didn’t know he was going to do that so it was a nice surprise, although seeing my face fill up two 20’ screens was weird…frightening, actually.
• As companies prepare for 2010, and what we all hope is a year of recovery, many are using outside resources to fill gaps created by the recession and gain specialized expertise without adding fixed cost. Our approach is, "Let us help you reach your business goals." It seems to have some appeal so go ahead and borrow it if you think it will help your business.
• This remains a very challenging time (obviously). The only way the economy is going to turn around is if we all pull together and work our collective butts off. That's what my friends are doing and that's what I'm doing. Sitting on the sidelines and waiting for things to improve will only get you left behind, it's a loser strategy. You get one shot at each day, so make the best of it!

All the best,
Steve

I blog a lot. Right now I have four blogs going and write seven post (in total) each week. It's a good bit of work but as I've posted here many times, it's something I truly enjoy. Most of you are asking, "Does all that blogging make you any money?"

The answer is a little, so far. I've picked up some small engagements from people that like the way I write, the way I think. It's really too early to tell if my blogging is a big money-maker since I've only been blogging for a few months. There is one thing that has happened as a direct result of my blogging that I think is very cool and will, perhaps, be very profitable. I'm getting to interview Gary Vaynerchuk.

Gary Vaynerchuk is the Wine Library TV. He’s been interviewed on The Today Show, Conan O’Brien, CNN, Fox News, CBS Early Show, Mad Money, ABC News, Spike TV, Ellen DeGeneres…you get the idea. He has about 1,000,000 Followers on Twitter. From what I can tell he’s a top five Internet celebrity. Gary, or someone that works for Gary, one never knows with successful people, has been reading my blogs for about as long as I've been writing them and likes them. So when they went looking for people and outlets to promote Gary’s upcoming book Crush It! I made the list. Yessss.

On October 13 Crush It! will be launched nationwide (you can buy advanced copies now at Amazon, etc.). Gary thinks I have enough credibility with my audience and a broad enough audience that I can help him sell books. At the risk of sounding boastful, I think I do too. I had over 2,000 visitors in one day last month and virtually all of them were blog readers. I don't know who they all are and that's not nearly enough to be significant, in an online sense, but it's enough to sell a nice pile of books.

I've read a couple chapters of Gary's book and I like what he has to say. Gary get's it. This is only the first of ten (10!) books Gary has signed on to write. Expect to see a lot more of Gary.

Stay tuned, this little adventure is just getting started.

Steve