There are different levels of success for everyone, it all depends on what your goals are. I've been a member here for 14 months and have succeeded in various ways. I have a full time job (like a lot of members here) which is  my main income. 

Going through all the training, the forums, WAbinars and interacting with other members here has taught me a great deal about internet marketing = success. Picking the proper domain name, developing websites, keyword research and seo has helped me succeed in my daytime job.

The company I work for has its own marketing and graphics departments and my department was not getting the results we were hoping for from the campaigns they set up. This only increased my expenses because the ROI was almost non-existent.

Our market share was suffering terribly, were at 32% and trending the wrong direction.  I finally had enough and took the information I learned here and started working with our marketing and graphics departments. It took some persistence to get them to listen to me because I work for a corporation and what does a service manager know about marketing, right?

Here's what I did;

We went over and restructured our website; Added flash banners with a call to action on the main page. We added a monthly newsletter with tips and other informative information that has a link to money saving specials on the information we provided. This is e-mailed to customers that opted in on our list.

I reviewed data from campaigns from the last 12 months to see what was working and what wasn't. I took that information and applied targeted marketing  to what was working and increased my response rate on these campaigns. By doing so I lowered my advertising expense because we stopped marketing to the customers with a low or no response rate.

I have set up my monthly campaigns and newsletters for every month of 2011 so we can systematically keep our customers focused and looking forward to the next newsletter and specials. This appears to be working and now that this is on autopilot, (sort of speak) I can focus on keeping my sales staff trained and providing our customers with that personal touch. The personal touch really seems to work well in setting up relationships and keeps the customer looking forward to their next visit.

WHO LIKES TO VISIT AN AUTOMOTIVE DEALERSHIP SERVICE DEPARTMENT?  A lot of our customers do now! (lol)

Now this is just a start, but our sales and ROI are trending upwards. Our market share has increased to 52% which is the highest in our region. By doing this I will make more money at my daytime JOB. One less thing to worry about.

All the information I applied to my JOB, I learned here at WAU. I now have the attention of our graphics and marketing departments.They have taken some of my ideas and applied them in 92 of their other stores. Did I get any additional compensation from them? NO, but let me tell you this, going forward I can apply this information to my own campaigns and know that I will be successful.

Just knowing that I was able to help an experienced marketing and advertising department leaves me with no doubt that I will one day work for myself doing what I really like, Internet Marketing. I couldn't have done this with out this great group.

I want to thank each and every one of you here in the WA family!

PEACE