What Does Pizza And Karate Have To Do With Online Marketing?

Being my first article here, I was asked to make this about me: To introduce myself to you.

I hate talking about myself. As a long time blogger and podcaster my goal is to help my audience through my content. But this was the assignment so I'll give it my best shot...

 

Who Is This Guy?

I own a company called Nuclear Chowder Marketing, a digital marketing agency. We help businesses large and small get more business online (and offline).

Most of our clients come to us looking to improve traffic to their website. Our specialty is SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

However, we are different than most SEO companies. We’re not just concerned about traffic. Driving traffic is a piece of cake.

Our passion is in building traffic AND conversions. The conversion, when traffic turns into a customer, is the real secret to success for any business both online and offline.

Most businesses want more traffic. And that's important.

But what you do with that traffic is where the rubber meets the road (and where the real money comes).

Because of this we practice an integrated approach to online marketing which connects the dots from search to social to email to content and more.

Where It Started

In 2002 when I became part owner of a martial arts school. My role was to market the then struggling and very small business.

I immersed myself in all things sales and marketing. Coming from a technology background, I was also able to take advantage of emerging online technology… such as Google. That was a lucky stroke as online marketing was about to become a hugely important tool for any business.

Very quickly, the school went from struggling to one of the top schools in the country.

Opportunity Knocked

One day a parent of one of our students came to me and asked if I would help his business. He told me he was searching online for a pizza place and our school appeared in the search results.

He was so amazed by that and the fact he saw our school everywhere that he hired me to do the same for his business. In 2006 my digital marketing agency was born.

In 2010 I sold my share of the school back to my partner and went full time helping businesses with their online marketing. Today we are what I call a full service digital marketing agency.

We can handle about any sized online marketing need. We create simple to extremely complex websites and manage any level of online marketing for companies large and small.

What's In If For You

What brings me here as a contributor to this blog is my passion for teaching. I have always loved teaching, which is what originally brought me into martial arts school ownership.

I joined the Hartford Springfield Speaker's Network to better my speaking skills so I can share and teach more.

I want to challenge you to think beyond traffic in your business. I want to challenge you to adopt a fanatical focus on conversions.

My goal is to bring you content that will help you increase the conversions in your business. So you're not just attracting qualified prospects but turning more of them into happy customers.

Do You Have A Question About Online Marketing?

I hope you will enjoy and get value out of the content I’ll share here from my many years experience in online marketing and business. I'd love to answer any questions you have. Leave your question in the comments below and I'll answer in an upcoming article here.

About Mike Brooks

Mike Brooks is President of Nuclear Chowder Marketing, a Digital Marketing Agency. He is the author of The Nuclear Chowder Marketing Method book available in print and on Kindle. Mike is passionate about helping businesses and entrepreneurs get customers online. Website development, advanced search strategy, social media, email marketing and mobile are just a few of the ways Mike helps local business owners with their online marketing. Mike also speaks and trains people all over the world.

How to Find Your Next Prospect in Linkedin Junk Email

I’ve heard some call it junk email; I don’t. What I’m referring to are the email messages we receive that inform us of when our contacts get a new job, celebrate a birthday, or have a work anniversary. The sender is listed as LINKEDIN UPDATES and these messages arrive in our inboxes (sometimes) daily. In the beginning and like many busy professionals, I use to quickly delete them first, just to be able to see the important messages in my box. But then I realized how valuable they were to finding my prospects; it was like finding diamonds in the rough.

Recently, I opened this update from Linkedin (LI) to see if there was someone celebrating something that I could say congrats for (Linkedin provides a little tab that you can click to send a quick congrats). One person listed in the JOB CHANGES section was promoted into a position that made them an ideal prospect for me. I clicked on her name to see her profile and then clicked on the RELATIONSHIP tab so I could see if I had filled in the HOW YOU MET section; sure enough I did!

We had met several years ago at an event and had exchanged business cards. At the time, she was in a position that would have made her somewhat of a peer to me, but we didn’t stay in touch. The difference in our companies and our geographical region didn’t really create much reason to collaborate or to stay connected about. I do remember her commenting or LIKEing my updates and posts on LI from time to time.

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Reading through her profile, I was able to confirm her promotion and read more about her new position. She was now the ideal professional who could potentially hire me for my services or purchase my products. I quickly clicked the SEND A MESSAGE button and drafted a message to her, congratulating her in her new position. I also reminded her of my services and asked her to keep me in mind for future opportunities. In less than 30 minutes, I received a reply back from her, thanking me for my congratulatory wishes.

Then, a few days later it happened. I received an LI message back from her, telling me that she had a need for someone with my skills for a gig in Boston. After a few back and forth messages, I sent her a contract for some work that I will be doing for her company in the near future. Making time to open the LI message and congratulating her put me on her radar. 

Who says you can’t get work from Linkedin? I can show you lots of ways of finding your next prospect there. Visit my site at http://The20Entrepreneur.com and contact me for more Web 2.0 marketing ideas for finding YOUR prospects online.