Focus and success go hand in hand. You are not going to be successful until you focus on your goals and how to achieve them. This is a widely known fact. Nothing new or Earth shattering about that statement. But, I think that when people achieve that first level of success, there are quite a few who lose their focus, and consequently, their success.

I am guilty of this myself. I could kick myself in the ass when thinking back on some of the things I accomplished and how much more substantial the return could have been had I remained focused and diligent. The old cliché` “Hind site is 20/20” does not make me feel better and, in my opinion, should not make you feel better either.

What I am saying is to work as hard as you can to avoid ever needing to say, “Well, hind site is 20/20/. I should have continued working just as hard if not harder” about your own work. Continue to push forward and work harder. There will be plenty of time to sip margaritas when you are retired.

Now, I am not saying to never take a break and enjoy your success, just do not ever get that false sense of security that it will remain or be easy.  Go out, have a few drinks (only with a designated driver of course!) and celebrate. Hell, I am always looking for an excuse to enjoy a few bourbons. (Some of you know this already!)

Typically, when I meet a goal or break a record, I will start to think about the feeling of deep satisfaction I get when meeting said goal. I will reflect on the pleasure it gives me to celebrate (typically with close friends and family) and what I need to do to meet or exceed my next objective. I then will formulate a plan and begin to execute that plan right then and there.

Now, I will say this, after getting my mind right and reevaluating some life choices and direction, for me it is a little easy to stay focused on my goals and working as hard as I can to achieve them. I am not saying that my goals are easy to achieve and that I win all the time. Nothing could be further from the truth. What I am saying is that I can and will remain focused. The reason? I am addicted to the feeling I get when I reach that goal I set out to achieve. There is just no better high. I love it. I want you to love it as well.

Stay focused and stay diligent. Even after one thousand successes, stay focused. Feel that high over and over. After a while it becomes infectious. Keep pushing and keep achieving.

Here is a checklist I use to help keep me on the right track after I achieve a goal:

• Scale if possible
• Duplicate if possible
• Carefully analyze what areas, or items gave the highest yield and focus my efforts there
• Envision and embrace your next success
• Get to work

Singapore – InMobi, the world’s largest independent mobile advertising network, has announced an exclusive mobile advertising partnership with Indonesia’s first and largest news portal detikcom. The two-year exclusive deal is geared towards bringing rich media mobile ads for the first time to detikcom’s rapidly growing mobile consumer base.

Detikcom is Indonesia’s foremost Internet destination with over 25 million page views per day. As well as more than 2.2 million users on smart devices. Indonesia’s growing mobile web user base has resulted in more and more digital content being accessed via mobile devices. The InMobi-detikcom partnership covers all traffic to detikcom’s iOS and Android applications for both smartphones and tablet devices.

“Detikcom is dedicated to bringing best of breed technology and services to our increasingly tech-savvy, on-the-go users. Carrying up-to-the-minute breaking news to more than 2.2 million consumers on smart devices alone, we wanted a mobile ad network with the global reach and local market experience to provide the best brand experiences to our growing mobile consumer base. InMobi’s rich media capabilities combined with evolving smartphone and tablet technologies will allow advertisers to realise truly engaging and easy to navigate mobile-optimized ad formats,” said Gerry Leo Nugroho, Group Head of Marketing Service at detikcom.

“We pride ourselves on staying ahead of the digital curve and are therefore delighted to be the first publishers to bring HTML5 mobile advertising to our consumers on such a large scale,” Gerry added.

Read more here…

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Amazing day today. I loved the pay per call walkthrough. See you on the inside!

Moreover, focus on trying to brand your ads – a click doesn’t account for the multitude of people that visit your site as a result of seeing but not clicking on your ad. With Plentyoffish ads, for every person that clicks we see three to four times as many people visiting our site. Branding offers an immediate lift.

Here are some benchmarks that you can use based on very broad/aggregated targeting and campaign types. There are outliers well above the “Optimal Range” but most advertisers cannot achieve them due to their various constraints.

• Optimal CTR: 0.11%-0.16%
• Above Avg CTR: 0.07%-0.09%
• Average CTR: 0.04%-0.05%
• Below Avg CTR: 0.02%-0.03%
• Poor CTR: 0.01%

NOTE:

It depends – what do you consider good?

I find that with an 0.08 – 0.12 CTR you can get lots of cheap traffic that converts well.

Most ads on Facebook probably get 0.02-0.06 CTRs (this is not verified information, just what I hear), and some people are very satisfied with the results even with those low CTR’s.

Some marketers can optimize Facebook ads and get CTR’s as hight as 0.2, 0.3 or even in the 1.0 area, which makes clicks very very cheap.

Note that CTR’s can be extremely high or low during the first hours of running an ad, which does not necessarily represent the true overall performance. You need at least 5-10 clicks on an ad to determine how it really performs. Also note that CTR tends to drop once your ad starts to get hundreds of clicks.

According to Pew Research:

Currently, 87% of American adults have a cell phone, 57% have a laptop, 19% own an e-book reader, and 19% have a tablet computer; about six in 10 adults (63%) go online wirelessly with one of those devices. Among cell phone owners, 42% own a smartphone as of May 2011. This means that 35% of all American adults own a smartphone.

US Tech Gadget Ownership

Just another reminder of how many people there are online and on smart phones. This industry is full of opportunity.

Accountability can be defined as an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one’s actions.

Personal accountability is all about holding yourself accountable for the actions that you know you should be taking to achieve desired outcomes. It’s about avoiding procrastination and working on the right things. It’s nothing more than you doing what you are supposed to do, when you are supposed to do it.

When we are young, we really don’t have to be personally accountable for much, most things are done for us and little is expected. As we age, we gain more independence, but society conditions us to take actions based on the needs or requirements of others.  Most kids do their homework because they are told to or required to, not because they think it will help them reach a goal they set.

As an online marketer, it is really easy to slack or work on things that are not that important in moving you towards your goals. If you work alone in this industry, it is even more difficult to maintain a high level of personal accountability.  You need to hold yourself accountable. Writing ads when you don’t want to, working instead of playing COD, whatever.

So how is that done? How do you become more accountable to yourself? It starts by being aware of what is happening. Think about your goals and actions, are they aligned? Do the actions you take move you toward your goals in the time frame that they should?

Here is how you can be better at being personally accountable.

1. Consciously  decide that starting today and everyday hereafter; It is up to you, to know what you should be doing and to do it. Know that ultimately it is up to you, you can decide to do this, or you can “not” decide which is almost as bad as deciding not to be accountable, because typically nothing happens.
2. Know your goals – fitness, financial, family, whatever. Hard to get to the right place if you don’t know where you are going. Keep them in a list and review them often.
3. Know your responsibilities – Balancing your checkbook, being on time, doing what you said you would do. These are a baseline, you have to do these, but you need to make sure you have them covered.
4. Be aware of your actions and choices – How you spend your time, how you communicate with others, your attitude and thoughts. This is where the magic happens; your actions and choices can make or break personal accountability. This is where goals and responsibilities get taken care of. Become fully aware as often as possible of how you are spending your time, are you being accountable to yourself? If not, alter your actions immediately. Also, keep a prioritized to-do list; it’s a great way to keep you on track.

I’ve talked with a few people lately about personal accountability and I believe it is one of the most important ingredients of success in this industry (and most really).

So what else can you do besides the internal commitment and control? Set up your external influences to help you be personally accountable. Find an accountability partner or mastermind that you can communicate with, fairly openly, and help each other remain accountable to each individual’s goals. Share goals and help each other focus daily or weekly. Ask if the others are doing what they said they would do.  This is like exercising your accountability muscles, the more you use them, the better they will work.

I also recommend joining groups, going to meetups and taking part in forums.  Anywhere you can communicate with like minded individuals who know what you are going through is a benefit.  I personally like to hear about successes and help with questions in the IMGrind forum, it keeps me motivated and I am more accountable to myself.  You can also form business relationships when you take part, which can also help you be more personally accountable.

A Facebook spokesperson confirmed the release via email to Direct Marketing News:

“All of our premium ad units that point onsite will be associated with a page post on Facebook.  Advertisers will also continue to be able to point ads offsite. This means that we no longer have ‘engagement ads’ but since premium ads offer the same functionality that stems from a page there is no change in features. Marketplace ads purchased through the self-service tool are not affected by this change.”

Yesterday I posted how the rumor is that the social media giant also plans on announcing their mobile platform during their first marketing conference in New York.  Here is Peter’s leaked presentation that also displays some discontinued ad units:

Google posted this news on this page and people have started to notice the news.

Here is the timeline:

• February 22: AdSense publishers can no longer start using the Hosted domains product.
• March 21: You will no longer be able to create new hosted domains.
• April 18: Hosted domains will become inactive and it will no longer be possible to earn from them.
• June 27: Hosted domains will no longer be available in AdSense accounts.

Google is also offering advice on how to migrate to another provider.

For more details on this change, see this page.

So, what does this mean for you, the renegade marketer wandering across the plains of the interwebs? It means opportunity. We are always speaking about building businesses and producing valuable content to engage with your audience and to create evangelists that will share your brand and message. Do you play games? Do you have a passion for games?

Perhaps you don’t play major releases but prefer to play games on your iPhone, or Kindle Fire – Have you considered cultivating and shaping a website or facebook fan page around one of these platforms? HUGE POTENTIAL HERE! You will virtually never run out of content – you could create articles, create polls and surveys, create follow along series where you explain the ins and outs of the game, do game reviews,

CMON MAYYYYNNNEEEE!!! Do ya see the potential?

Let’s move our minds into trends within this vertical. Have you considered following the news and trends within this market? Here is an example of where a gaming trend and a fanatical audience meet to produce a big opportunity…

SOME IDEAS for YOU:

NEWS:
ANGRY BIRDS has just recently been released on facebook!
http://apps.facebook.com/angrybirdsseasons

Take advantage of this newsworthy event and drive traffic to your own survey:

SURVEY QUESTION PAGE
Have you played Angry Birds on Facebook?
- yes
- no
<submit answer> —-> direct to Pre Offer Page

PRE OFFER PAGE and LEAD FORM
Thanks for participating in the Angry Birds om Facebook Survey
12,956 answered yes
4,123 answered no

Enter Your Details Below
for your chance to WIN a New iPad and to get news on the hottest game releases

name: ___________________
mobile phone/email : ___________________

<Get Instant Access> —-> Serve iPad offer

Push an iPad email submit or other related offer
Meanwhile, you are building an email or SMS list

BRAND NEW ANNOUNCEMENT -
Angry Birds “Space” has been announced as coming soon by Rovio.

IDEAS:
JUMP ahead of the game release and build a fanpage
JUMP ahead of the game release and create a survey
CONTENT LOCK your downloadable .PDF walk through and cheat guide (outsource this)

Angry Birds has a fanatical user base and the barrier to gameplay is low meaning that
people of all ages play this game. So you can appeal to a wide audience. NOW – Take this mindset and apply it to other games within the space or on other platforms, ya dig?

ALSO – make sure you check out my post on creating FACEBOOK ads that get AWESOME CTR

Thanks for your attention, see ya next time.