When Brooks wrote The Lead Machine, it was like he was sitting across the table from me and explaining each item. It was a very relaxed conversational tone but one of someone who spoke from a lot of experience.
The Lead Machine is 303 pages long. In addition to an introduction and closing, the book five major sections and a number of very short chapters. The five major sections are:
The BARE Essentials of Digital Marketing
- Build
- Attract
- Retain
- Evaluate
Throughout the book, Brooks shared links to countless resources supporting the book. Naturally, he practiced what he preached throughout the book get potential customers on an email list.
Build
In the first section of the book, Brooks focused on developing a web presence with a business website. Brooks stressed to not rely on social media alone. You need your own website because you can’t rely on social media always being there. With your own site, you could make offers to your customers in ways you could not on social media platforms.
Brooks also provided guidance for selecting a web design company as well as platforms to host on. He provided excellent guidance for what to include on a website and how to present it. It is all about attracting visitors to your site.
Attract
“When people use search engines, they are actively looking for a solution” (Brooks, 2017, p. 82).
You must, therefore, create your pages in a way to help customers find you. In my opinion, one of the most important sections of the book was on how to find keywords and use them in your pages and advertisements. Brooks shared tools and methods he uses to optimize his pages. This is a section I will be analyzing in more detail. There was a wealth of great information.
Brooks talked in depth about social media and more about blogging. He considers blogging to be a very effective and flexible tool for promoting your business. He used a wonderful analogy about electromagnetism to describe the importance of adding content to your blog. Each blog post increases attraction in search engines. I am in total agreement.
“Every time you create a blog post, you create a web page. Every time you create a web page, you’re creating another opportunity to be found at the search engines by your ideal customer.” (Brooks, 2017, p. 145).
Stuck for ideas to write about, Brooks included some great ways to generate ideas. These are ideas I have used in the past. He also shared guidance for crafting an ideal post.
Brooks not only spoke in depth about blogging but also provided detailed information on podcasting, creating YouTube videos, and posting on various social media platforms.
There was also a section on digital advertising, a necessity in today’s digital world. Brooks included lots of great tips for making your dollar go further.
Retain
The last two sections of the book were rather short but extremely important. The Retain section focused primarily on email marketing and the Evaluate section focused on measuring your progress.
According to Brooks, your digital marketing efforts should be focused on getting people on your email list so that you can enter into dialogue so that in the end you can earn a living. I have certainly shared a number of articles about the importance of growing your email list. In this section, Brooks discussed the importance of email marketing, how to get started, and how to put it into action. One key is to use an email service provider. I personally use MailChimp as an ESP.
Evaluate
In the Evaluate section, Brooks provided a detailed look on Google Analytics. While I was reading this section, I was also making adjustments to my Google Analytics profiles. One huge takeaway for me in this section was the URL builder. I was aware of the links generated by them but I was not aware of the tool. Instead, I was building unique URLs by hand. This will be a much easier approach to measure results.
Personally, I will be having this book close to me as a ready reference. I will be dissecting what Brooks has shared to improve my sites as well as improve the sites of those I serve.
If you are interested in digital marketing for your business, I would certainly recommend reading The Lead Machine. If you need help with any of the content in the book, please drop me a line.
