Exact and Formal Sciences

Marketing is not an exact science; it is more of an art form that needs a talented artist to create a true masterpiece. That is not to say that an amateur couldn’t make a nice painting or even have a successful internet marketing campaign. However, there are differences between the artists and the amateurs. It is not just inherent talent and experience that creates the artistic master. It is a deep and formal understanding of underlying concepts that allows that master to create a foundation which can be built upon and expanded. Internet marketing is very similar to creating a painting. Anyone can do it. Start a Twitter, a Facebook or a MySpace account and you are socially networking. Add some Google, Yahoo, or Bing keywords and you are internet marketing. Right?Not necessarily so. Most businesses who market online use only a handful of methods to implement their plan with only a few options in terms of spreading money around to find more customers. At no point will they conduct an industry analysis or research the competitive landscape. As a result, their strategy is intuitive and flawed in a way that may not be detectable in a day to day examination. Below is a list that highlights some of those common misconceptions that seem to be commonplace in the online environment.Intuition – This is the most common misconception in which the marketer believes that the keywords, phrases and strategies can be determined intuitively without any research. Even the best marketing masters will start with a research phase to determine the best course of action and any efficient model will have a research phase built in.Budget – This is where many businesses fail to provide an opportunity for success. A typical small business will take profit and dissect it at the end of some time period. That is where the marketing budgets are typically created. Large organizations, however, typically build in a particular percentage of revenue from their product or service that will be dedicated for marketing. Marketing should not always be seen in terms of how much money was spent. In truth it should look at how much money was earned, compare to what was spent. This is called return on investment (ROI) and is the true measuring stick of any marketing effort, no matter how much it costs.Tracking – One of the most basic failures in marketing is to fail in understanding how clients find an organization. If a business is spending 50% on a newspaper ad and 50% on online marketing and a client comes in the door; what systems are in place to understand the client’s path to purchase? Despite various tools available, tracking of marketing campaigns is very much overlooked.Opportunity Costs – It is a simple concept that is often overlooked in marketing. It is assumed that companies will put their marketing money into the most proven campaigns that show the highest probability for success. This is not always the case and shouldn’t be the case. Sure it makes sense to go to the well that provided a good client or two. However, when dealing with limited resources (marketing money), making one decision often comes at the expense of another opportunity. Understand the cost of opportunity decisions is a critical factor for success in internet marketing, since so many opportunities are available but time and money are commodities that must be used wisely to be most efficient.Effort – The cheapest path to internet marketing success is effort. Whether done by an in house specialist, a technical company or outsourcing avenue, effort is what makes the most efficient marketing campaigns work. Creation of marketing collateral, research, tracking, analysis, networking and content updates are what make a website dynamic entity that has the tools to be successful. This includes blogging, networking, news, testimonials and any update that is both relevant and is capable of generating interest.Social Networking – One common misconception is that an organization will just create a “viral” video or marketing piece that will make the rounds to bring in business. Although this may happen with certain brands, people or companies, it is no way to begin a marketing campaign. In fact, the latest successful marketing campaigns run concurrently with the social networking world, not instead of. It is not just an alternative to conventional marketing anymore, it is a necessary companion. Why make a TV or radio commercial that runs for a couple months and then ends once the contract is complete? With social networking outlets, that marketing campaign can be extended almost indefinitely by linking that marketing collateral to social networks that target potential clients.First or Bust – This misconception is based on delusions of grandeur and a natural determination to be the winner in a contest. However, is it worth winning? Everyone wants to be number one for Google, Yahoo and Bing so that they will get the most clients and be the most successful, right? Not necessarily. In fact, being in the first spot with pay per click marketing may attract more non-targeted users that will be paid for, despite the fact that they are not targeted buyers. If too many non-targeted buyers are coming through, perhaps being number two or four or five is more economically efficient for that particular keyword or campaign. Perhaps those wasted funds could be spent elsewhere?Adjustment – Last but not least is a failure to adjust to the data available. Internet marketing is a dynamic environment where competitors are often changing strategies to remain competitive. Failure to adapt to these adjustments can have a large impact on an overall campaign. Failing to adjust is a common way in which resources are wasted, opportunities are missed and mistakes are made. Ultimately making adjustments is looking at the big picture and making priorities based on results, beliefs and experiments. Those who make the best and fastest adjustments will have a competitive advantage and a road map for success.

I used to be a slave to my day timer. I would fly from Anchorage, Alaska back to Dallas, Texas and leave it on the plane in Seattle. Consequently, the next week, if my assistant wasn’t with me or until the airlines would send it back to me, I would be lost. I didn’t know where I had to go, who I had to see or even when to be there! I don’t even carry one today! I load everything I have to do the next week on my body files, things like, my appointments, addresses, phone numbers, or anything else that cover these same scheduled events. I actually load them sometimes Sunday night or Monday morning while I shower. It’s definitely the best stress reliever I have ever found and I teach it in our workshops. I can make it adjustable for any given day, or a month at a time. That’s my choice!Imagine never ever having to be the poster child for sticky notes. Impossible you say, well ask the 1000′s of students graduated from MTI’s 7-hour workshop. By priming your mind, with mindful based stress reduction techniques, and using mental file folders or body files, it’s definitely achievable. You see, I never have left my house, my office. or anywhere else and left an arm or a leg, they’re always with me.Yes, I know how your husband or wife calls you at the office or home and says, “Hey sweetheart before you come home do you mind picking up these things? Then they give you the list and say. “Oh and don’t forget to write them down.” You know what happens next. The list you made while on the phone in your office or on the dining room table is still exactly where you left it before you walked through the door of that grocery store. You immediately stress out thinking what was it I was supposed to get? Or you do the universal shuffle and embarrass yourself by calling your loved one to explain how it blew out the window, or someone spilled coffee on it and you can no longer read it. How creative you get with your excuse is your own vice.The body files I am referring to are 10 files built right on your body. You can load it with grocery items, things to do, flight information, or a list of other important things you normally carry around in your notebooks, purses, wallets, or the famous day timer. Yes the one I left on the plane I mentioned above. Oh and by the way if you find my day timer no need to return it, remember my day timer is in my mind!Well strap in and let me take you through a short explanation of what we teach to those 1000′s of workshop attendees I referred to above. That’s right, a system to change their life. Hopefully to help us build the memory traces, or tangles we need to have when those fearful cognitive declines hit us in our latter years. Or I might even mention the mental disorders caused by internal or external diseases, the kinds that grasp so many unfortunate individuals in life today. I hate to even have to think about the existing brain maladies of life today our medical professionals have to treat. Diseases we get because we didn’t have some forethought or guidance in designing our lifestyles, or brain maintenance techniques. Research or developments in science are now being discovered through longitudinal or double blind studies today to help eliminate those maladies.I hope I haven’t alarmed you or maybe I do hope I have alarmed you. I am not trying to cause you Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I am merely trying to make you aware of the benefits of brain development and maintenance on a daily basis. Yes, today with the new findings and technical breakthroughs, we can have the healthy brain now being shown on TV and the internet you too can have a healthy brain.After attending a program with, my brother in law and sister in law who are both M.D.’s one in internal medicine and his wife rehabilatative medicine, put on by the ANNENBERG CENTER FOR HEALTH SCIENCES AT EISENHOWER I quickly became aware of the problem. In that program called “The Memory Prescription: Assessing and Treating the Spectrum of Brain Impairment” in 2004, I realized the major problem most individuals are having universally is M.C.I. It’s called Mild Cognitive Impairment it is alive and running wild. The real reason is because we have not been taught formalized Mnemonic training or proper brain maintenance. Lack of programs like these causes us to continue encoding, storing and poorly retrieving the same way we always have. I then realized how important memory training will become in the future. It solidified in my mind why people are so adamant about looking for ways to avoid the cognitive decline that comes with aging. Sometimes these cognitive declines are due to environmental toxins or just the dreaded inflammations our body gets internally because of the stress levels we don’t recognize we have or intend to cause ourselves.We do have internal and external environmental toxins that can be diminished or lightened with proper brain care and nourishment. Most are agricultural toxins or our internal inflammation of the body due to stress, or other chemical transmitters. By training your working memory you wil alleviate some of the cortisol stress hormones generated by the Adrenal gland.At MTI we teach and deliver formalized memory training workshops in businesses today. We either do by way of a public forum or at in-house venues it’s our effort to contribute. Even though many are generic basic programs we can customize programs based on industry or corporation management styles or new paradigms. We have been hired to teach how to remember paradigms such as Six Sigma Training or Stephen Coveys 7 Habits of Highly Effective Managers. We teach these skills to help people remember by using the following tools: A blended combination of body files, picture vocabularies for numbers and mnemonic devices for formulas, concepts or theory education.The important things you have to remember you need to learn by using experiential instruction. This makes it more conducive to everyday multi-tasking operations within your mind. Organization is the key to memory. What I mean is having a mental location to store information. Your normal process of data gathering through encoding, storage and retrieval processes are rearranged to Encode, recode then store for retrieval. Where better to be able to do that than by using your mental and physical capacities you now have?When we build these body files, we call look files, because you can see them in your external view as well as your mind’s eye, we then teach our attendee’s how to utilize them. A person’s intuitive nature then becomes an active tool along with memory fabrication. When you utilize the different learning mechanisms such as sight, touch, hearing, smelling, and emotional attachment values you can more effectively recode data you have learned or learn every day. I believe your picture vocabularies we each individually build proactively create conscious and unconscious memories. These memories acquired by us form our mind and otherwise are the essence of our long term and short term capacities.The “Body Files” we help you create are also tied through a memory matrix to learning and utilizing mnemonic devices. In addition, at the same time you learn these files in an order we then we teach to file in that same exact order. We create file structures you will use now and in the future using phonetic tools and applications. The combination of files, time intervals daily, weekly, monthly or even yearly help us recall. It then gives us the springboard effect to broaden our comprehension, increase our retention values ultimately reducing the time involved in the learning curve.Now let me go back and try to explain what I mean by the above sequence of applications and events. There are 10 files we build on your body. They are listed below and I will build them in your mind if you will allow me. I say that with no reservation that it can be done because every one of us has this innate ability laying dormant in our mind. It is actually just a matter of turning the switches on. Your mind works the same way your laptop or desktop computer works it’s just that you haven’t been given or taught the software program to make it run more efficiently. Yes better than any computer built today, or I personally believe, will ever be built in the future.Let me say we have in the past and currently do deliver workshops both in-house and publicly to employees and management levels of fortune 500 companies like Microsoft, Texas Instruments, Hewlett Packard, Dell and the other major designers of computer equipment, or operating systems, and software. They probably would not like me to say that but no doubt that they are intellectually and managerially confident in their respective climates. That being said you also have the best camera ever developed or probably will be developed in your eyesight. (ditto on the above disclaimer as well). Your mind works in pictures and searches for action to drive the learning ability. Actually it drives the acronym F.P.G. I will tell you about soon.The ten files are:1.- Toes Where I would file the first item to pick up or thing to do.
2.- Knees The next position I would use to store the next item I need to remember.
3.- Muscle I am almost halfway up my body files and have many more. Files that is.
4.- Rear It’s not called a derriere, buttocks, tush, or booty its a rear for a reason.
5.- Lungs I’m halfway there with plenty to spare.
6.- Shoulders It’s a strong place to put things I carry a lot around on it daily.
7.- Collar I sometimes have to stretch It open to file the next item here.
8.- Face I hope egg on it is not the only thing that gets there without planning.
9.- Point The name of the thing I try to make sometimes and my family miss it.
10.-Ceiling The very thing my wife says I hit some times instead of filing to it.Yes, I know the last file number 10-Ceiling is not actually on your body but it will always be wherever you are. Most people say wait a minute when I go to the grocery store I have to buy a lot more than 10 items and we know that. We teach our students not to worry about the number of items at that point because before the end of their workshop we show them how to load hundreds of items on those same ten files! Yes, it is exciting, unbelievable, mysterious and rewarding. It’s just the opposite way you install a new program on your computer. Instead of unfolding, decompressing or extrapolating the files outward, we compress the files inward in your mind and use bullet points to store multiple items or pictures.Once we establish the files, we show our students how to file anything to those files. In fact, I have written an audio cd program on how to load all 66 books of the Bible on nine of those ten files so that you can recall them in order or backwards and forwards. We actually, load the 39 books of the Old Testament and 27 books of the New Testament on your first 9 body files. My wife and I taught tenth grade students in Sunday school for years using these same ten files to remember scripture, key authors and pertinent information about the books of the Bible.Most of us were taught to read left to right top to bottom, and I recognize not all of us were taught that method, but most of us in the U.S. were. Given that fact, we teach you how to file exactly the opposite way from the bottom up. Our mind, like the computers we created, cannot read a blank or a space so we teach you to how to load your mental file folders accordingly. There are also other rules we teach to expedite your learning of these techniques and processes.We teach the file picture-glue-method of learning. This is the fourth generation of mnemonics and we are currently working on the fifth as you read this. Now let me explain the F.P.G. system to you.File- It’s a mental location or somewhere to store information in.
Pictures-That’s because our mind works more efficiently through the use of pictures.
Glue- For the bonding agent used to keep the picture in the file long enough to create a long term memory trace starting in the short term memory status.The filing of such items as dates, numbers, texts, appointments, abstracts or formulas using this system allows us to recall the items or information at our mental fingertips. We do this eliminating the stresses causing the ultimate memory deficiencies due to age related cognitive decline or mild cognitive impairments. You hold the power to avoid such problems by exercising your brain much like you do for your physical ability. Oh yeah in case you didn’t realize it I just taught you the ten basic phonetic sounds commonly used in our workshops to remember names and other pertinent information. And I did it in your subconscious mind and now can you figure it out. Let me say I am of the opinion that the age related cognitive declines I referred to before I personally believe are not really necessary. I believe research and training of the working memory or fluid intelligence as we psychologist technically call it will begin to change in the future to read just cognitive decline and not age related. I believe in the plasticity of the brain and its ability to reconstruct itself. I don’t really think the age is all it’s made up to be.To learn more of these types of files and even the more detailed think files we teach used for detailed data recall Please visit our website. If you would like to find out how one can attend our public workshop, have us develop an in-house customized workshop or purchase the systems on audio, you can find it all there. I hope you have enjoyed the read. Please send your comments or questions.