Turkey was not the only Bird I had at Christmas this year.

I was also honoured to have Drayton Bird over as a guest. We’re cooking up a few very exciting things in the New Year together, which I will soon be sharing with you. In the meantime, I got a few snippets on tape from the Grand Master himself for you to enjoy. Here’s a funny story about Christmas and a certain David Ogilvy….

Look out for the next one in a few days.

I’m just getting started on my adwords seminar in Cheshire. Should be a good day. Updates later….

This is a picture of everyone coming into the room before an exhausting 8 hours of me talking.

It was a great day. I’ve spent so many times in the last 6 years looking into peoples’ adwords accounts and seeing so many fundamental errors, that to get 50 of them into a room at the same time and “fix” them was wonderful.

To all that came – thankyou for being such a receptive and friendly audience. Now go forward and make your business more profitable please.

If you missed it, I have three pieces of advice:

1. Go and get Perry Marshall’s Definitive Guide to Adwords. Best ton you’ll ever spend.
2. Take control of your own adwords account. If you do outsource it, make sure you’re getting proper reports and that you are tracking every profitable keyword. When you know which one’s make the moolah, that’s when you do the SEO.
3. Make sure you’re on my adwords workshop list. I’ll be emailing you when the CD is available for the event, and news about future events. Use the form below.

Not sure? Check these testimonials out:

An exclusive seminar for all business owners that want to get more out of their online marketing…

The Art of Blogging For Business

Presented by Ken McCarthy and Mark Attwood
November 16th, Cheshire, England

Back in 1994, Ken McCarthy held the world’s first Internet Marketing Seminar in San Francisco. You can see it on YouTube here:

Ken was the first person to recognize that the internet is a direct response medium. His students have gone on to make billions online over the past decade and a half.

Since 2003 he has run the world’s most highly respected internet marketing seminar, The System, in Chicago every year.

I had the privilege of speaking at Ken’s System UK Intensive in London in September this year.

I also gave Ken, a New Yorker, his first taste of the North of England by showing him around my home town of Manchester.

If you have no idea who I am, this is a clip of me speaking at the British Library in London in the summer of ‘09. It was a 90 minute talk at Rachel Elnaugh’s “Marketing Magicians” event, and this is me talking about the long tail opportunity:

There’s more info on me here, here and here. (If the pages change, don’t worry, that’s just me split testing them).

Anyway – Ken was so taken with it, and so intrigued by the way I use blogs to generate income, that he suggested we hold a one-off, one day seminar on the subject in Manchester on November 16th. BTW: this is NOT about affiliate marketing or “Flogs” (fake blogs) or any of that stuff.

It’s about how real business owners can use readily available software and, mixed with the right strategy, can harness that power to generate more online reputation, seo power, traffic, indirect income and much, much more. Take a look around the testimonials on this site to get an insight into the non-Guru, non-BS approach I take to marketing education.

Then take a look at where this blog ranks for the term “internet marketing expert” on the UK Google server (this pic taken at 12.05pm on Saturday 17th October, click to enlarge):

This was achieved in a matter of a few months, almost accidentally, with no on-page SEO initially, with a blog that I only started in February, with much lower PR than other pages in the same niche and with less links than much of the competition.

It’s just one of scores of quality blogs I operate pulling in serious traffic and long term business growth.

If you want to find out more, sign up to get on the list right away. We’re keeping the location secret and the numbers low, so sign up below NOW to find out more:

Please note: This is not a “get rich quick” thing – this is serious minded stuff from serious minded (although with a heavy dose of humour) people. When you sign up you’ll get direct access details to me and my team and you’ll be able to call me directly with any questions which we’ll happily answer.

I’m speaking live at Ken McCarthy’s “The System” UK Intensive!

Here are some shots.

This is me getting everyone to shout “We Love The System”. Twice, in fact.

This is Ken addressing the audience.

I got mobbed at lunchtime with questions from some really bright entrepreneurs from all around the world: mainly UK, but lots of US, Danish, Irish, Hungarian, French. A truly international event.

At 1.30pm there was a great surprise when the unadvertised Drayton Bird turned up to do an hour’s presentation. Great value info from the Daddy of the UK DM industry.

Just watching Karl and Ben doing their conversion stuff, although I’m flagging from the combination of being adrenalin burnt from talking this morning and sleeping in a terrible bed. That’s the problem with airport hotels – they’re designed for people “passing through” so the level of care (i.e. a pillow that you can actually sleep on) is way down the scale.

Had a lovely dinner (because of the company, not the food) in a Heathrow Chinese with super web designers Ben and Lizzie Hunt. It was Lizzies birthday n’all!

Day Two:

Enjoying Ben Moskel’s talk on affiliate marketing. Some great insights. Every internet marketer should have a go at affiliate marketing. It’s a lot of fun.

Here’s Ben in action:

NEWS: We got a lot of people in the bar last night asking us how we get such great results with Face Book advertising, so in the spirit of DM we’ve decided to put a guide together. We’re calling it the FaceBook Marketing System. Sign up for priority notification of when we put this together over the next few weeks here. This will help you build demographically targeted lists fast and very low cost compared to PPC or seo:

Here’s Steve and Vince at the Show. Make sure you say hello to Steve, and avoid Vince at all costs. He’ll meet you, then assume he owns part of your business and then try to ruin your reputation when you tell him what a deluded, egotistical, fantasist he is:

Here’s Robert McDemus, he’s a thermo spray expert:

Here’s the legendary Derek Dearden (he’s been to almost every System Seminar):

Now we’ve got the Super Affiliate Rockstar Greg Davis up on stage. This is mean, kick-ass keyword stuff:

Greg has set up a CPA network all of his own called eliteclicksmedia.com. He just gave an amazing talk – a real affiliate rock star.

UPDATE: After a fantastic curry with the System Faculty and guests, we then proceeded to deprive the over-lit bar in the Sheraton of some of it’s single malt, delivered with less than no joy by a really bored Polish barman. I had to do this simply to enable me to get at least some sleep in the hotel’s unbelievably shite bed.

We all needed to get back home, so had to get on the road as soon as we could. We did hit a 5 mile tailback on the M6 but it was an otherwise uneventful journey.

I had lots of memories spinning in my head – all the new friends we have made, the brilliant minds we engaged with, th fun of being on the stage in front of such a vaired and lovely group of people (some of whom are doing AMAZING things online). If you were there: thank you so much for such a great weekend immersed in my favourite subject: internet marketing :-)

I’ll upload a few more pics here:

Some networking action:
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Wealth Master Paul Avins:

Here’s a load of pictures posted by Steve on his Picassa account. See if you can spot yourself.

You can get full MP3 recordings of my talks at the even inside my Inner Circle.

I’m speaking right now to an audience of about 100 at The Federation Of Small Businesses in Hyde.

We have a lovely venue here at The Village Hotel, and a room full of wonderful business people.

I’m giving a one hour presentation and workshop on Internet Marketing.

Here’s a photo :-)

That was taken right at the start, about 7pm. I finished speaking at abou 8.40pm. What a crowd! I’ve never had so many questions fired at me. Brilliant!

A big thank you to all that attended and all those people that queued for nearly two hours to get into the Inner Circle before the price went up today to £97 per month. It was a pleasure meeting all of you.

Also, a very big special thanks to Stockport Business Consultant Tariq for inviting me, convincing the FSB that I was the right man for their event, and organising the whole shebang. Great stuff!

I’m very much looking forward to speaking at the Oxford Wealth Club in October. It’s run by Paul Avins, the author of the brilliant book all entrepreneurs should get and read: Business SOS. Come along to the event if you can make it. Details here.

I just got my copy of the DVD of Rachel Elnaugh’s Marketing Magicians event at the British Library in June.

Take a look at it:

It’s a fantastic package crammed full of super-useful information from a diverse bunch of speakers, including me!

Royston Guest – a really useful and inspiring speech about how important referrals are in your business. I guarantee you are not doing everything Royston recommends, and you are losing sales because of it.

Thomas Mahon – a remarkable story of a tailor and his blog. Thomas was inspired to “start a conversation” on a blog. He did this – by blogging about what goes into making his Saville Row suits. He’s got a full international order book because of it. A superb lesson on how powerful blogging really is.

Me – I give away Waaaay Too Much Information in my talk. One attendee told me the other day that he’d halved his PPC budget and quadrupled his hits just from the adwords info I give on here.

Alan Forest Smith – from hairdresser to powerhouse direct marketer, Alan is a remarkable speaker.

Sue Stone – an inspirational talk from officially “the happiest woman in Britain”. Seriously, Sue has clients from all over the place and she teaches them to be happy applying the law of attraction and positive thinking.

Rachel Elnaugh – The First Lady of Dragons Den has been there and bought the T-shirt. Red Letter Days was an amazing achievement. The fact that it went down was heartbreaking, but Rachel’s fighting fit and gives an impressive talk here on branding that will inspire you. A true testament to the fact that being a successful entrepreneur is as much about how many times you can pick yourself up off the floor as anything else. Go and read Rachel’s book: “Business Nightmares”

Here’s a clip of me speaking at the event. There’s 1 hour and 20 minutes of me on the DVD.

There are some more clips in my Members Area, but if you want the whole shebang, I suggest you buy it today:

You’ll get a copy in the post within 14 days of us receiving the order. There is only a limited stock, so I’d get this valuable piece of business education as soon as you can. When you’ve watched it, feel free to come back and leave some comments here.

I’ve been working very closely on relaunching the kitchen sinks website for Brass & Traditional Sinks Limited. It launched today at last!

One small factor that I have proven increases conversion rates (although I’m not going to disclose here by how much :-) is the use of a photo by the telephone call-to-action, typically top-right on most “money” sites.

The majority of websites will use a stock photo of a girl with a headset on. Since reading “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell a few years ago..

.. I have been intrigued by the idea that our subconscious makes the right decision (am I going to buy from this person? is this a genuine work of art? do I fancy this person?) etc. but then our conscious mind spends forever procrastinating about that decision.

I’ve taken this into website conversion rate optimisation by the testing of this one factor – the call centre girl picture – by varying the positioning and the “reality” of the photo. I have found that the very best converting picture is one of a real person that works within the business. Add to that the need to look into the eyes of the customer – pictures of people looking down or at a computer screen really suck.

If you check our skip hire or portable toilet hire websites, you’ll see that I’ve added a red pencil “This is Louise. She really works here” with an arrow pointing to Louise – who really does work here.

This makes us stand out in a number of ways. It breaks convention. It adds authenticity. But the real killer, for me, is that this is a genuine photo and I believe that visitors to the site can subconsciously tell that it is a genuine picture, and that helps overcome the number one barrier to conversions – trust.

I’ve not got them to add the red pencil stuff yet, but the picture of a girl on the sinks website is of Vicky who – guess what – really works there! I took the picture with my iPhone whilst filming the videos for their website (still editing them). It’s not a perfect picture in terms of resolution and composure, but it’s completely real and that’s what matters online.

This theme was discussed at length at my last internet marketing course – if you’re in a market that is dominated by companies full of cash (like the travel industry, for example), it is far better to use your actual personality, your “voice”, to create a brand that no-one can compete with (because no-one can be you) rather than looking like a low-rent corporation copycat.

Great news! Ken McCarthy is coming back to Blighty to do another System Intensive following last years’ mega-successful event.

The System 2009 London UK Intensive is a fantastic event to go to if you have any interest at all in Internet Marketing.

Ken has been a teacher of mine for over 4 years. I’m a massive fan, and a lot of my internet marketing success was down to visiting his System Seminars in Chicago. It was there that I met the likes of Perry Marshall, Dave Bullock, Dave Taylor, Howie Jacobson, Glenn Livingstone, David Rothwell, and a bunch of other people that are all right up there in the field.

Last year’s intensive was one I went to as a visitor, but Ken got me up to introduce him without warning me beforehand. I was hungover and a bit nervous, but I did the job okay. Later in the day he got me to join in with a live workshop ripping into websites of people in the audience. It was amazing (and my favourite sport) especially as I was sharing the stage with some other highly distinguished people like the legendary Drayton Bird (who I now quote in all my talks), the conversion rate squirrels Karl Blanks and Ben Jesson, wordtracker founder Mike Mindel and Ben Hunt, the web design genius.

If you’ve not heard of Ken, he’s the guy who first realised that the internet is a direct response medium when he held the first Internet Marketing seminar way back in 1994 in San Fransisco. Check it out:

I don’t know how much longer he’s going to be running events like this. I suggest you get yourself booked onto the System UK Intensive as soon as you can – I might even be there to meet you!

I had a great time at my June Internet Marketing Clinic in a very sunny Manchester.

We had all sorts of people at this event, from Terry Edwards who owns a southport restaurant Casa Italia (amongst other businesses), to Steve Charlesworth and Martin Holling who run a travel agency that specialises in almerimar holidays and other dynamically generated package holidays to Spain, the Canaries and Disneyland Paris, to Wayne Connors who runs one of the UK’s biggest network cabling companies, ACCL Ltd., to Rachel Elnaugh herself – one of the UK’s most well-known female entrepreneurs, to Chris Peck – a specialist in acquisitions and formerly of British Agricultural Foods, to 19 year old Vicky – just starting out on her business and internet marketing journey with UK kitchen sinks specialist Sinks.co.uk.

The first day was the usual super-intensive brain blowing content I’ve been delivering since I started these clinics in October 08. I started with the question “What is Internet Marketing?” and then unveiled all the techniques I’ve been using to maximise traffic and conversions since 2003 over the next 8 hours.

Day two was completely different in that we took everyone’s online activities to pieces and reassembled them with low-cost, actionable plans to achieve maximum long term success in the shortest time possible. From keyword research, to reassembling web pages with on-page SEO, to getting under the hood of people’s adwords account to enhance their performance, to rewriting copy on the page to increase conversions at the same time as optimising them for long tail keywords.

I was ably assisted by my SEO cohort Steve Wild. Thanks guys for helping make it such a good weekend.

One part of the feedback we got was from people being surprised at how laid back the whole event was. We even took everyone out for dinner and drinks on the Friday night – it’s that kind of event! (I find a lot of the most useful marketing ideas come over a bottle of wine outside of the classroom).

If you want to book for my next Internet Marketing Clinic – click on the link to find out when it is.