I would like to share with you the fantastic afternoon I had this last Saturday. My wife and I had the privilege of being invited to the two hour Saddleback Civil Forum with Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain. This was the first time these two presidential hopefuls, and expected nominees for the Democratic and Republican Parties, shared a public stage. 

Rick Warren, author of “A Purpose Driven Life,” and pastor of our Church, Saddleback in Lake Forest, had organized for Obama and McCain to come and present their views on important issues. 

When I first decided to become a coach, the only experience I had with the coaching industry was from something I had heard almost by accident.

I was doing some spring-cleaning and I came across a box of audio CDs someone in my household had ordered from a life coach a couple years earlier, but no one had ever listened to. I put them on while I was doing my spring-cleaning and the words that entered my ears through the sound waves coming from my portable CD player (this was before iPods) changed my life forever.

First I’d like to commend you for sticking with me through the previous six installments.  We’ve covered a lot of ground, and hopefully you’ve been able to take something of value away from each article.  Now we finally come to the end.  We’ve discussed lots of topics, from technology to advertising.  From theory to practical application.  Now it’s time to help you assemble your own online marketing plan and what specific steps you need to take to put your newly formed strategy into action.  So let’s get started.

In the last installment, I discussed website basics.  I intentionally left off one part of the typical website: the capture mechanism or gateway.  Some call it the form or registration page, but whatever you call it, it is the most important part of your site.  As far as I’m concerned, it is more important than the website itself.  Yes, I really said that.  Let me repeat myself: It is more important than the website.

During a recent trip to South Africa, I stumbled on a project so exciting I felt compelled to resume my old occupation as buyer of furniture and interior decorative accessories.  For almost two decades of my life I travelled to third world countries around the globe, being constantly astounded by what human beings can create with their hands.  At the time I couldn’t have imagined a job more joyful than sourcing, selecting and shipping stunning pieces all for use to embellish exquisite expensive interiors.

Stuart Siegel has successfully parlayed eNeighborhoods, a business which he founded, sold, re-bought and sold again, into a co-ownership of the Florida Panthers. Here is how is happened:

Most Agents hold top-producing Agents in the highest regard.  A top-producing Agent is given a status that is almost God-like.  Since I was put on a pedestal for many years during my sales career, let me give you an undeniable truth.  Each and every one of us has a top-producing Agent inside of us trying to get out.  Each person has the God-given ability to produce at a stratospheric level.  Top-producers are ordinary people who happen to be doing extraordinary things.

Ok, so we’ve talked about advertising — the value proposition in the ad, the call to action, the advertising key words, as well as sources of Internet traffic.  We discussed pay-per-click (or pay-per-visitor) advertising and search engine optimization (SEO).  Now it’s time to talk about the actual website.  What do the customers see once they have clicked on your Internet advertisement?  In this segment we will be discussing everything about your website, from the website’s landing page, to the content, to the value propositions, to graphic appeal and finally to keeping those customers on your site for as long as possible, or to minimizing abandonment.

In a previous article I posted on another blog earlier this year, I gave accolades to Randy Pausch's  "last lecture."  A tradition in academia where a retiring professor gives a departing speech/lecture.  In 2006 Randy was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  In August last year, he was told he likely had 3 to 6 months of good health remaining.  Yesterday, we heard the news that, regrettably, Randy passed away.

He left a legacy, though, in the inspirational messages he left in his last lecture.  Some key takeaways:

o  The purpose of barriers:  to weed out the things we don't want bad enough.

By now I think we’ve come to understand that there actually is a science to online lead capture, and we’ve identified the methodology where we can actually test and measure resulting in the ability to produce much more bang for our Internet marketing buck.  From here we will examine and discuss at great length a number of different crucial elements of the online lead capture process.