So, Who Are We, And Why Should You
Take Any Notice of What We Have to Say?
So you can get to know us, we will share our experiences in business and marketing with you.
Cameron is a professional journalist by trade, and my background is in Behavioral Science.
Although we trained to go into careers in our chosen fields, we have both come from small business backgrounds, and very quickly we decided that working as employees was not for us.
In 1997 we bought a community newspaper called The Range News in Maleny on the Sunshine Coast and we threw ourselves into our business. It was a clear case of “ignorance on fire”.
It was a daunting new world of sales and marketing, deadlines and dealing with small business.
We had to learn every aspect of running a small business and publishing a newspaper on the run, always with the immense pressure of a weekly deadline (and scary mortgage) hanging over our heads.
In the beginning, we did what we thought was the logical thing to get more advertisers.
We hit the streets and visited business owners in our territory and across the Sunshine Coast, to sell them advertising space.
We were almost like the dreaded Amway distributors, knocking on doors, interrupting people as they went about their daily business, working our tails off to convince people that they “needed” to market their business in our paper.
Often, our interruptions were unwelcome and a nuisance, so we changed tack and got to work improving our paper by adding more features and ways for business people to advertise in it.
In essence, we added value to what we did, so that our advertisers received more “bang for their buck” when they placed an ad in our paper.
Cameron became passionate about small business marketing in general, especially using direct response marketing methods.
We got on to the mailing lists of some of the most successful copywriters and internet marketers in the world, and started to implement their strategies.
We even traveled from Australia to the US for a single day long marketing consultation with copy writing genius, Craig (“The King of Copy”) Garber.
Tanya with Craig Garber at his home in Tampa, Florida
When we started to implement some of these direct response strategies, into our business, incredible things began to happen.
We no longer walked the streets or “cold called” to sell advertising, our small business clients came to us.
And these were not just clients in our immediate area (people who knew us personally), but also small business people from across the entire Sunshine Coast.
And they booked bigger, more expensive ads, they repeated their orders more frequently, they gave us glowing testimonials, and they referred new business to us.
Before we even knew what was happening, our turnover had exploded.
At the end of 2006, we were approached by APN Publishing, (the company who publishes the Sunshine Coast Daily) with an offer to buy our business.
We sold The Range News to APN for ten times more than we had paid for it.
This seemed to be a good time to consider alternative ways to do business (we were completely burnt out), and we looked to the Internet for a new way forward.
We found a US based online marketing education company, where we learned how to shift the marketing principles we had implemented in our newspaper, online.
Within four months we were recognized with sales awards in both companies we represented, and a Master Marketing Award.
In companies with combined memberships of around 40,000 people in 180 countries, we achieved a status that, at the time, only 14 other people had achieved.
Being presented with a Marketing Award at Lake Tahoe, March 2009.
We had the opportunity to meet and collaborate with some of the most well known names in online marketing in the world today.
But the industry we were in was not a good fit for us.
All we wanted to do was educate small business people how to market successfully online, as we had done at The Range News.
And although we wanted to remain based on the Sunshine Coast, and deal with business people locally, we also recognized that the way to achieve ultimate reach and leverage was on the world wide web.
We started to think about the frustrations encountered by small business people we had consulted with over the years, and found that a common theme emerged.
They wanted to take their business online, but did not know where to begin, because they didn’t really understand search engines or — more importantly — the marketing process.
They could not see the bigger picture, how all the pieces of the online marketing puzzle fit together.
They were intimidated by the technological aspect of trying to develop a website.
And to be honest, they were too busy working in their businesses to spend the time trying to figure it all out.
Universally, we found that they were bogged down with issues that in reality, were of little consequence.
For example, they would spend a fortune on a flashy, impressive website, that was no more than an expensive digital business card.
They would engage an SEO expert to optimize their site, but too often, the keywords did not match their market. Worse, they would engage a Social Media “consultant” to “tweet” on their behalf, at great expense, but for no return.
Tanya accepting a Sales Award in Las Vegas, November 2009
Time and again, the feedback we hear is that consultations with online marketing ‘experts’ and web designers involve so much ‘techie babble and Internet jargon’ that people don’t always understand what they have signed up to buy, how it works, or why they need it.
Businesspeople pay a small fortune for a website that they don’t understand how to access after it has been completed. Or worse, they have to pay a fee every time they want the most minute change to it.
A website must be a user friendly extension of your business.
And business people simply have to be able to trust the advice they are given by marketing consultants.
We could see that there was an opportunity to provide a solution.
Initially, we began by writing a book “The Online Business Blueprint” …
“The Online Business Blueprint” is for newcomers to Internet marketing to give an in depth and “big picture” understanding of how the marketing process works when you apply it to the Internet.
Its aim is to teach you why people buy things. To educate you about how to tap into your ideal prospect’s deepest fears and frustrations and craft marketing messages that “speak” directly to them, regardless of the product or service you have to sell.
And ultimately, how to lead them seamlessly through your process to the point that they feel they know you, they like you, and most importantly, they trust you.
Because this is the only circumstance under which anyone will buy anything from you, online or off.
This may seem obvious, and people who are successful in business go through these processes all day every day. But few stop and think consciously about what they are doing, and then about how to take these concepts and match them with the right technology to re-create that process online.
As we outline in our book, two of the most critical elements to success in business are to offer solutions to the people in your market, and have a passion for what you do.
So to that end, we now offer marketing consultation and website design services to small business people across the Sunshine Coast, who want to take their business online, or maximize their marketing efforts across a whole range of advertising media.
From personal consultations to business and marketing audits, direct response and custom copy writing and email marketing to website development and design, we can re-vamp or tweak existing websites and marketing systems, or develop new ones to help business people get more traffic, customers and sales.
It is very gratifying to work with exceptional business people, and to watch their understanding of online marketing and profits grow.
Best Regards,
Cameron & Tanya Outridge
SalesPipelinePros.com
Sunshine Coast Website Design and Marketing for Small Business
email outridgemedia@gmail.com
