Brushing up skills and new ideas

Clarityse.InternetMarketing
“I know that e-marketing is changing at a phenomenal rate and it’s got to be useful to brush up my skills”
“I’ve set up a business and I know I’ve got to get my internet marketing right”

These were just a couple of the thoughts going through my mind as I was considering attending a 3-day internet marketing course run by Simon Coulson and his team at the Internet Business School.

What I didn’t realise was that it addition to achieving what I’d hoped for above, I’d also come out with some really intriguing new business ideas that I’m now busy exploring. For anyone who has, or is interested in, setting up their own business, or who has recently been made redundant and is wondering what’s possible outside the corporate world, I can’t recommend it highly enough.

 And if that’s grabbed your attention, then read on as you can get a significant discount…

Simon Coulson is an interesting guy – he worked for BT for 14 years before embarking on an entrepreneurial career based on internet marketing. Needless to say, he’s now got half a dozen companies and is a multi-millionaire. But more importantly, he REALLY knows his way around internet marketing and this course is packed with content.

To be clear, while most of the course content applies to small businesses and corporates alike, this is primarily aimed at small businesses and entrepreneurs. The Internet Business School runs a number of courses but this was the 3-day Internet Marketing Diploma.

Simon Coulson

Simon Coulson

Having taken a year out recently to travel with my family, I knew that the world of internet marketing would have moved on since I was last immersed. But I was really struck by how what big corporations would have paid tens of thousands of pounds for just a few years ago is available to us all for a fraction of the cost (or for free).

Take Wordpress, for example… it’s good enough for Vogue, New York Times, Kylie, Mark & Spencer and yet we learned how to build our own site - or of course you could just outsource it for less than £1,000.

We covered a huge breadth of subject matter, including:

  • Different online business models (including affiliate marketing, which was a real eye-opener for me)
  • Market research & competitor intelligence
  • Domain names and hosting (did you know you can host hundreds of websites for just $7 per month?)
  • Creating websites (using Wordpress)
  • Website analytics
  • Selling online (a lot easier than I thought!)
  • Customer contact strategies
  • SEO – so you could do most, if not all, yourself
  • The role of video (including low cost video production options)
  • Pay per click advertising strategies & tactics
  • Outsourcing
  • Social media strategies & tips

For those who are fairly new to internet marketing and find it all a bit daunting, this course certainly makes it all seems much more achievable. For those who are more experienced, you’ll definitely get some new handy tips.

OK, here comes the deal...

The course is normally £2,495 for the 3 days but if you click on this link and enter the coupon code CLARITYSE”, you’ll get £1,500 discount – so that’s £995 for one person or £1,495 for two. That’s the price I paid and I have to say, at less than £350 per day’s coaching it’s good value for money.

Downsides? Well, there was a lot of powerpoint and information download, so it was a pretty heavy few days. They alternated presenters and interpersed with video and numerous examples live online, which helped - but it was heavy. Having said that, with the amount of content that was covered, I'm not sure how else they could have done it. Oh, and there was a lengthy upsell session at the end of day 2 that could have been done in half the time.

I guess the best endorsement I can give is that I've signed up for their next level of coaching, which gives me access to all their face-to-face and online training courses for free, plus some individual coaching. We'll see how that goes, maybe it will be the subject of another blog in due course.

By the way, the Internet Business School also runs a number of one-day courses on specific topics (SEO masterclass, Google Adwords, LinkedIn, etc). If any of those interest you, do let me know because I can probably get you a discount on those too.

So now of course I have to put all of this into practice. I'm definitely exploring affiliate marketing as an oportunity alongside my consultancy business - in fact offering you this discount is my first test market! But watch this space for more on that. And of course this all takes time, so I'm not pretending everything's going to be put in place overnight!

One final note on the course... while there was an enormous amount of content, we all got an excellent workbook to refer back to (which I've done several times already) - and they videoed the whole thing so we've got access to that if we need a recap.

All in all, a very good experience. As I said, lots of content for those focused on the corporate world but for those with your own business, or who've recently left the corporate world and are wondering what's next, I couldn't recommend this highly enough.