Recommended Reading On Web Design and Digital Marketing
Some Of The Materials I Recommend For Builders & Remodelers To Educate Themselves On Modern Day Web Design And Digital MarketingI spend fours hours three days a week hooked up to a kidney dialysis machine and to make efective and productive use of that time I view a lot of train videos and read a lot of artticle on web design and digital marketing and my noteBook (The Small Business Systems Notebook/Blog 
) contains a lot of links to what I am reading/viewing.
Books I Recommend On Web Design & Digital Marketing (with an obvious leaning towards my friends in the Home & Garden Building & Remodeling Industry…)
While a lot of my thinking has come from listening and taking notes to YouTube videos on the topics of web design, SEO, and digital/social media marketing these books sit on a nearby bookshelf or in the Kindle/Audible app on my iOS devices.
They Ask, You Answer: A Revolutionary Approach to Inbound Sales, Content Marketing, and Today’s Digital Consumer, Revised & Updated
by Marcus Sheridan
At the core of They Ask, You Answer is a simple idea: educated prospects become happier, better customers.
If your prospects are asking questions, you must answer them — openly and honestly — on your website.
The book/audiobook teaches the reader:
- How to build trust with buyers through content and video.
- How to turn your web presence into a magnet for qualified buyers.
- What works and what doesn’t through new case studies, featuring real-world results from companies that have embraced these principles.
- Why you need to think of your business as a media company, instead of relying on more traditional (and ineffective) ways of advertising and marketing.
- How to achieve buy-in at your company and truly embrace a culture of content and video.
- How to transform your current customer base into loyal brand advocates for your company.
Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen
by Donald Miller
Building a StoryBrand advocates for a storytelling framework in business messaging. It encourages businesses to position themselves as the guide, customers as the heroes, and provides a seven-step process to clarify their messaging for better engagement and success.
Donald Miller’s StoryBrand framework is a storytelling and marketing strategy that helps businesses clarify their messaging and engage with their customers effectively. The framework consists of seven key points that guide businesses in creating a clear and compelling brand narrative. Your story has seven points and they are:
- A Character (your customer)
- Has a Problem (they need to solve)
- And Meets a Guide (your business)
- Who Gives Them a Plan (your solutions)
- And Calls Them to Action (to start the buying process)
- That Ends in Success
- And Helps Them Avoid Failure (what would happen if they don’t buy)
All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low Trust World
By Seth Godin
The Stories That Make Up Your Brand
I still rememeber the impact when I first discovered and read Seth Godin’s classic “All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low Trust World” and the voice in my head that said “This guy gets it!“
People relate to stories. Stories connect people to your brand.
“All marketers tell stories. And if they do it right, we believe them. We believe that wine tastes better in a $20 glass than a $1 glass. We believe that an $80,000 Porsche Cayenne is vastly superior to a $36,000 VW Touareg, even if it is virtually the same car. We believe that $225 Pumas will make our feet feel better–and look cooler–than $20 no names. . . and believing it makes it true.”
Seth Godin has also said:
“Marketing is the generous act of helping someone solve a problem. Marketing helps others become who they seek to become”
Seth makes a point that there is a difference between bad marketing, the kind of marketing that interrupts potential customers and pressures them into buying a service or product they may not need or want and good brand marketing messages. Good marketing is where a brand helps customers amd is a positive force in society.
“The other kind of marketing, the effective kind, is about understanding our customer’s world view and desires so we can connect with them”
Nolen Walker has produced a series of books tailored specifically towards the roofin , plumbing and HVAC trades and while not everything he writes about these trade cohorts is applicable to every small business category his books are always a valuable read…
A Complete SEO Guide for the HVAC Small Business Owner
by Nolen Walker
In today’s HVAC industry, competition is steep. Discover HVAC SEO and marketing techniques to help get more HVAC leads and expand your customer base through your HVAC website. Get advice from the HVAC digital marketing experts about online best practices, helpful SEO tools and platforms, and strategies that get your company seen. Learn how keyword usage, metadata utilization, and user experience contribute to your HVAC SEO and website success and find out how to get your HVAC site to rank in more Google Searches and Google Map Searches with better SEO.
While 2023 you can say Martin’s book is somewhat “dated”, his book was written in 2016 so it’s 7 years old or 49 dog (internet) years old it is still a geaat book.
Contractor Marketing Simplified: How To Build Your Online Presence And Get Found By The Right Customers
by Martin Holsinger
If you are a remodeler or home building contractor wanting to get found online and make more sales, you must begin with a solid online presence. Amazon best-selling author Martin Holsinger shows exactly how to apply the principles of online marketing to your business with today’s online technology. In an easy-to-read, down to earth style, you will learn exactly how to:-Build your online presence,-Get found by your ideal customer,-And get maximum return on your investment.If you are a contractor wanting to grow your business using the internet, then this is the book for you.
Traffic Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Filling Your Websites and Funnels with Your Dream Customers
by Russell Brunson
Master the evergreen traffic strategies to fill your website and funnels with your dream customers in this timeless book from the $100M entrepreneur and co-founder of the software company ClickFunnels.
Traffic Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Retargeting Recipes: 7 Spicy Strategies That Will Heat Up Your Conversions & Make Your Campaigns
by Justin Brooke
After spending millions in ads online, I’ve pulled together my best retargeting campaigns (also known as remarketing ads if you’d advertising on Google). In this 80 page “cookbook” you can follow my designed-for-profit retargeting recipes and have a complete strategy for your retargeting ad campaigns.
Youtility for Real Estate: Why Smart Real Estate Professionals are Helping, Not Selling
by Jay Baer & Erica Campbel
Real Estate Marketing in the 21st Century | Facebook Marketing for Realtors (Real Estate Marketing Series): (Real Estate Marketing Social Media Series Book 2)
by Michael Smythe
(While a little bit dated (most any book on modern marketing techniques and tools becomes dated within minute of being published) it is still valuable for the thinking and mindset it helps impart which is timeless.)
This Is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn to See
By: Seth Godin
(For what it is worth reading or listening to anything or everything by Seth Godin is a tremendously worthwhile experience.)
Youtility: Why Smart Marketing Is about Help Not Hype
by Jay Baer
(Jay Baer also has a small but incredibly valuable repetoire of books worth reading or listening to)
What I Am Reading or Listening To Now (Or On My Reading List…)
Epic Content Marketing: How to Tell a Different Story, Break through the Clutter, and Win More Customers by Marketing Less
by Joe Pulizzi (Author)
How do you cut through the noise, commotion, and bad information that is right now cluttering up your customers’ digital space?
Epic Content Marketing.
One of the world’s leading experts on content marketing, Joe Pulizzi explains how to draw prospects and customers in by creating information and content they actually want to engage with. No longer can we interrupt our customers with mediocre content (and sales messages) our customers don’t care about.
“Epic Content Marketing” takes you step by step through the process of developing stories that inform and entertain and compel customers to act–without actually telling them to. Epic content, distributed to the right person at the right time, is how to truly capture the hearts and minds of customers. It’s how to position your business as a trusted expert in its industry. It’s what customers share and talk about.
Once we hook customers in with epic content, they reward us by sending our sales through the roof.
Epic Content Marketing provides everything you need to:
* Determine what your content niche should be to attract and retain customers
* Discover and develop your content marketing mission statement
* Set up a process for creating and curating epic content
* Learn how to leverage social and email channels to create–and grow–your audience
* Measure the performance of your content–and increase your content marketing budget
With in-depth case studies of how John Deere, LEGO, Coca-Cola, and other leading corporations are using content to drive epic sales, this groundbreaking guide gives you all the tools to start creating and disseminating content that leads directly to greater profits and growth.
Whether you’re the CMO of a Fortune 500, a digital marketer, or entrepreneur, “Epic Content Marketing” gives you the tools you need to vanquish the competition. Start your epic journey now!
The Ultimate Sales Letter, 4th Edition: Attract New Customers, Boost Your Sales
In the age of email and instant communication, great sales copy is indispensable to closing a deal. But too many sales letters end up in the junk file or the wastebasket. In this new edition of his top-selling work, author Dan Kennedy explains why some sales letters work and most don’t. And he shows how to write copy that any business can use.
Among other things, he provides:
Completely updated text and examples
Great headline formulas
New exercises to spark creativity
The best way to use graphics
Kennedy is the most successful, highly paid direct-response copywriter in the country. In this audiobook, he shares his step-by-step formula so everyone can write letters that will nail the sale.
$100M Offers: How to Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No
By: Alex Hormozi
I took home more in a year than the CEOs of McDonald’s, IKEA, Ford, Motorola, and Yahoo combined as a kid in my 20s using the $100M Offersmethod. It works. And it will work for you.
Not that long ago, though, my business had gotten so bad that I literally couldn’t even give my services away for free. At the end of each month, I would look at my bank account hoping to see progress (but there wasn’t). I knew something had to change…but what?
Over the next 48 months, I went from losing money to making $36 for every $1 spent. In that time period, we generated over $120,000,000 across four different industries: service, ecommerce, software, and brick and mortar.
But, unlike everyone else, we didn’t have great funnels, great ads, or a wealthy niche. In fact, we didn’t even send emails until we had crossed $50M in sales. Instead, we were able to do this one thing really well: We created offers so good, people felt stupid saying no.
Here’s exactly what this book will show you how to do:
- How to charge a lot more than you currently are
- The tiny market, big money process we use to laser focus on niche markets overflowing with cash
- The “unfair” pricing formula: How we multiplied our pricing by 100 (and got more people to say yes…for real)
- The value flip…so you never get price compared again (That’s a promise.)
- The virtuous cycle of price: Use it to outspend your competition (for good) while using your product to attract the best talent.
- How to make your product so good, prospects find a way to pay for it
- The unbeatable value equation: to make what you sell worth more than your prospects have ever received
- The delivery cube: to make delivering your products and services cost less but provide more
- The trim and stack hack: to maximize profit using the absolute best delivery methods. (This has never been shared publicly and was how we made $17m in profit on $28m in revenue in a year when I was 28 years old)
- How to enhance your offer so much, prospects buy without hesitating
- The scarcity stack: How to use the three different types of scarcity in every offer you make (without lying) to get people to buy the moment you ask
- The “everyday” urgency blueprint: to get prospects to buy right now, using everyday life to create real, ethical time pressure
- Unbeatable bonuses…and watch your prospects’ hesitations melt away as they begin reading their credit cards to you before you even finish!
- God-mode guarantees: So good they make anyone say yes (even people who would never normally consider buying). I’ll show you how to stack and layer all four types of guarantees together. I even give you my 13 favorite guarantees word-for-word to swipe for yourself.
- Magic naming formula to get the absolute highest response rates and conversion rates from everything you do to get new clients
- And so much more
The methods contained within this book are so simple, so instantaneous, and so effective, it’s as if they work by magic. If you implement even one tactic in this book, you’ll see the change in your prospects’ demeanor. And you’ll know the $100M Offers method worked when you start hearing, “What do I need to do to move forward?” before you even ask for the sale.
Schedule a Zoom Meeting with Jerrald Hayes of Paradigm Projects & The Small Business Systems Co.
More Info…
I am in kidney dialysis treatment MWF until around noon but otherwise I am generally at my desk between the hours of 8am to 5:30pm EST (unless I am outside playing with my dog) and sometimes when I feel like I’m on a role into the evening too so if you would like to give me a phone call and talk to me about your project ideas please do and feel free to leave a message.
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