Internet Marketing Gets Humbled: A Tale Of Two Cities

As a marketing punk and culture raver I found myself back on the loose again lately. I was in the process of tidying up some work in my home home office when the phone call came, ?Ted ? You gotta get down here!? said the voice on the other line. I summed up fairly quick that it was serious. The first response was that this was going to totally trash my morning if not my day because this meant I had to jaunt down to the Detroit Airport area in Romulus.

?How serious is it?? I asked. ?Oh man, you gotta see this ? this is incredible what these people are doing!? and with that I hung up the phone. My associate was talking about the Internet Summit here in Metro Detroit on the last weekend of March 2008. Without much hesitation I jumped into my car and tore off down the highway. I knew about the internet seminar this weekend I knew it would be small. I got so caught up in the Dan Kennedy Super Conference that was coming up on April 3 that this internet seminar slipped under my radar.

Now my buddy just tells me that I must see it in person to believe it?.. Hmmmm

We Choose Our Heroes

When you think of boxing you think of Mike Tyson and you also think of many others who have totally demolished their competitors in the ring. We think of Las Vegas glitz and HBO specials and think of the star studded high polished sporting events on pay per view. Meanwhile there is some guy who can pull a plow with his bare hands somewhere in Alabama with a third grade education that can whip the snot out of Tyson as easy as breathing. And so it goes.

That is exactly what I feel about these folks at the Internet Seminar I attended here in little Romulus, Michigan. The folks who were speaking at this event were not the big headliners I was used to. I have seen guys like Derek Ghel, from the Internet Marketing Center, or Yanik Silver from the Kennedy Circle. I looked over the list of speakers and although I have heard of Internet legend Matt Bacak I had to confess the others on this list left me baffled.

Here is what is interesting about the Metro Detroit event?. These guys had all the answers to questions that have been eluding me for months. I have some very specific areas of study when it comes to Internet Marketing and one of them includes massive amounts of legitimate targeted traffic. I had some other specifics too when it comes to doing some offline advertising. I had some very detailed criteria on my list and these guys were addressing all of my concerns and to me that was phenomenal.

You see I have spend thousands of dollars at Borders books every year trying to keep up with the latest and greatest of web marketing. I bought courses and ebooks and webinars in the effort of keeping up with the times. Still with all of that prep work there were some loose holes in my methodology. Yet these guys delivered again and again with each and every presentation. I sat there with my jaw dropped open and I looked around the room. I had been searching for months for these very answers and now I was getting them addressed ? who would have thought? In Detroit!

The Big Time

I barely had time to rest and I was back on the road again. I mean I was really on the road ? literally. This time I had to race down to Nashville for the Dan Kennedy Super Conference. Dan Kennedy is the master of Direct Response and wealth building and I am a member of his Master Mind group and his Inner Circle group. This annual event was being put on literally hours after the Internet seminar in Metro Detroit. I still had a lot on my mind and I was trying to keep everything all together mentally.

This seminar was pure glitz and everything these guys sold at the show cost a few bucks. You have amazing ?How To? kits and training manuals on many different aspects of marketing. This show had all the big names such as Paul Hartunian ? the master of publicity. The stage show was incredible and loud and you could rub elbow to elbow with many people who were making 2.1 million a year and thought nothing of it.

I was hustled in and out of exciting breakout sessions and met with Internet marketing experts who were masters at conversions. I was also thrown into many new conversations about what other professional entrepreneurs were going to do with their businesses. We racked up tabs galore. We feasted on prawns, pasta, prime rib, Jack Daniels Whiskey, Tennessee BBQ, and everything else under the sun. It was exhilarating.

But at night when things were quiet and I was heading back to my hotel I thought about Detroit. I thought about how when the sales people made their sales pitches at the end of their presentations how nobody budged. It?s not that they didn?t want to go back to the deal table and get the specials being offered by each presenter. It?s not that the audience members lacked enthusiasm or thought that the speakers were in any way substandard ? believe me they weren?t. These guys were top notch in every way imaginable.

I keep thinking about Metro Detroit and the Internet Summit because my home team has so much heart. They got so much fighting spirit and lets face it? In these troubled times they have total guts. You have to remember to survive here is incredibly difficult. In fact, last year 35,000 people have actually left this state in pursuit of a better life. Michigan was shut down as a state last October due to inner political fighting and government budgets. Granholm was able to fix the numbers so that didn?t have to happen and to top things off we have a high real estate foreclosure rate.

Who Were The Heroes?

After seeing two totally contrasting events such as these it would be hard to pick a real role model. The gut reaction would be to run for the obvious heroes like Dan Kennedy and Yanik Silver who are millionaires many times over. But I got to tell you that one man I was most impressed with out of all of this was Greg Cesar from the Detroit seminar.

This guy was a total powerhouse and I have never heard of him. He had managed to create companies and use cheap online strategies and offline strategies to fill up his funnel with the right type of people.

This guy got his pay per clicks down to just 3 cents each and got his ads in prime spots. His ROI was incredible. Since he had the volume he was able to funnel his customers to doing what he wanted. The easiest was to send them to an 800 number that was connected to a call center. This was powerful because he had roughly 9,000 orders. They were able to close and fulfill them all.

He had some unusual problems. They had so many orders they had to close down a number of his companies so they could fulfill them. His phone bills came in boxes and they had to be delivered by FedEx. I was very intrigued with this Greg Cesar because he came out of nowhere. He had a lot of valuable information and he was so generous with his time. I sat there watching him speak and was spellbound with the things he had to share.

My head was buzzing as I tried to take it all in. He had a tight network of endless leads and the beauty of it was he didn?t have any employees or customer service for many of his ventures. That meant that he was able to keep all the money he made. Thanks to drop shipping there was very little else needed to fulfill these orders.

Lessons Learned

I devoured the lessons from the Detroit seminar. I was testing out the tools and strategies as soon as I would get back every night and they worked! I got a kick out of the heart and soul I seen from these guys as they delivered their presentations. I was also glad to get some no nonsense straight forward answers as it pertains to Internet marketing

Detroit ? and all the wonderful people in it are still in the game.

Ted Cantu can share with you, ?Lessons Learned From The Dan Kennedy Super Conference? with special guest speakers such as KISS ? Gene Simmons, George Ross, from Trump?s Apprentice, and much more at http://www.1seomichigan.com/lessons