Focus Marketing! – One Focus

FOCUS MARKETING! One Focus –

Let’s get this blog started –

Thank you so much for coming to read the One Focus blog. Learning to focus on marketing is my priority. I sincerely hope you enjoy this blog and give me some much needed feedback. It’s true I’ve had other blogs but none were on topics I was passionate about. This one I am.

I really love marketing and have done it in one form or another for years. Even when I went back to a job job, I continued marketing and consulting for businesses.

This particular post is just an introduction and will cover the following –

Who I am (I realize this part may not be that interesting for many but at the same time I think I should get it out there)
How I got here
What to expect from this blog
What I do

Who Is This Guy?

So, here we go. My name is Ben Blackmon and I live in Knoxville Tennessee with my two sons Jase and Evan. We have a great life and if you don’t have kids you might want to get a couple. Sure, it’s hard sometimes but most things in life which are worthwhile are not easy. You can get more details on me by going to my About page.

How I Got Here

I got here – meaning I started One Focus Marketing in the late 1990’s. Maybe I should clarify. I had the idea for it back then but it was more surrounding email marketing and direct response. After attempts in various industries I settled into the real estate / mortgage arena.

Push came to shove and ultimately my mortgage business went in the tank. Then I had to go back to work for the man. Basically I got scared. Instead of relying on my skills I just wanted to show up, work and somebody else worry about paying me, benefits, etc.

Fortunately, I kept hustling with my consulting work and also a computer repair business. Doing those kept at least part of me in the entrepreneurial world and I just kept plugging away.

Finally, I decided doing just a little bit of work each night was not enough for me to escape the corporate life and drastic measures were needed. On August 11^th I worked my last day in the corporate world. There were no tearful goodbyes, just a cake, an exit interview and see ya.

Reminded me of how little I was valued as an employee. Sheesh!

One Focus Marketing had already been in existence for a while and I knew what to do to get started. I have clients I’m working with and it was time for me to get my blog and podcast going. (Podcasts will be available within the next 21 days)

How did I get my marketing education?

Simple, I put out my own money and did marketing! I invested in copywriting courses and seminars. Studied Google AdWords and AdSense. Learned social media marketing. Then I spent my own money to test.

During this time I created some really incredible campaigns and actually placed 2^nd in the National Sales Letter Contest, even beating out the big boys. (If you want to see every step of that campaign including the copy, checklists, mailing schedules, autoresponders, etc, click here and I’ll send them right to you.)

One thing I discovered about marketing is you probably don’t want to have anyone doing your marketing if they haven’t ever used any significant amount of their own. Some of the top marketers I follow are Dan Kennedy, love him or hate him he is hands down one of the best of all time. Perry Marshall – very practical and his news letter really has incredible content. Pat Flynn, a relative newcomer but very smart and candid. He discloses everything from income to opinions on some of the top service providers. Not a lot of guys out there give you the real deal when it comes to providers of landing pages and autoresponders. He doesn’t hold back.

Here I am now with a new business, some clients and a whole lot of ideas.

What I do – The short of it is I do marketing consulting. This blog post might not be the best place to go over it but you can check out my Start Here page for more details. This is a brief overview and you can certainly contact me for specific questions.

What to Expect from this Blog –

This blog is not going to be just about business, marketing and so on. I have a life and other things matter more and you know I’m talking about my family.

My topics will mostly be about business but will also include, plant based eating (no I’m not a vegan, I just don’t eat meat), Family adventures, time management, empowering yourself, starting a business after 40 and also there will be tutorials as well as the occasional giveaway.

Now, if you’ve read this far and you’re looking for someone to really jump start your marketing let me tell you why you should choose me:

You will hear from me often – The number one complaint I hear from clients about other consultants has nothing to do with results but rather about communication or really the lack thereof.
Focus – Another big challenge for many business owners, entrepreneurs and professionals in private practice is focus. They have so much going on it is difficult to concentrate on what marketing tasks are critical and keeping up with changing marketing conditions. My job is to take control of this and put it into a manageable system which you can use with relatively little effort. The very least it will cut your time in half compared to what you used to do. Now you can concentrate on why you got into business in the first place.
Rapidly changing market conditions – In this environment we all are well aware how fast things change. What worked yesterday doesn’t work today and so on. Staying on top of this kind of stuff is fun for me.
Understanding the internet is only a media – For 99% of businesses (and I’m not sure about the other 1%), the internet is really only one media to use. If your only market penetration or at the very least, customer follow-up is online than you leave yourself open to the big crush. The big crush is when Google or Facebook or Amazon say, “we did it this way before now we are going to do it a completely different way and in addition we no longer are going to allow {insert your type of business} to advertise any more. Thinking that can’t happen is a fatal mistake. What I do is make sure your online to offline message to market match and is effective. I could write a whole book on this but we’ll talk later about it.
It’s a relationship – The agreement between us is very in depth and in many cases personal due to trying to understand exactly why you do what you do. It’s important to establish trust and rapport. I’m not saying we need to become friends on Facebook. Just mean we will have to get to know each other to create a really effective marketing campaign.

Ok, so there you have it – the Who, How and What (Why is coming soon!)

My sense of humor is pretty dry and very lowbrow, so if you ask yourself, “is he kidding,” I probably am.

Seriously, thank you for reading this far and please feel free to Contact Me by going to my Ask Ben page.

See you on the other side!

Next up – Morning Accountability Group – Do You Have One?