Ari Galper interviews Ed Rush

The first thing that hits you when you listen to Ed Rush talking is the understated tone of his voice.

Yet in the past three years he's had sufficient marketing success to make us all sit up and take notice.

With softly spoken words Ed responds to the interview questions with an easy deference that fools the listener into thinking that maybe he's just an average Joe who managed to hit the right buttons at the right time. Then he relates what he did before he became a successful internet force. He flew F18s in combat.

Well, maybe a guy who can do that is always going to score high, but what can an ex combat fighter pilot tell hardened marketers about on-line selling?

To get the full story from this interview you need to hear it through. Listen to the man quietly relating his learning experiences. Hear him laugh at his own mistakes and own up to naivety. However, for those who really don't have the time, here are some of the most salient points.

On the back of his decision to move from full time defense flyer to reservist, Ed discovered the existence of the ebook and decided to write a 'how to'. Following the best practices of non fiction literature he chose a subject in which he was well versed. Fighter pilot tactics.

Recognizing that not everyone has access to a jet plane he decided to aim his product at gamers. It could have been a winner but for the fact he realized it couldn't be done without risk of breaching national security regulations.

So he shifted his ebook subject to - How to become a candidate for the job of fighter pilot.

This one hit the mark.

Lesson #1 - Choose a product that will sell.

Having produced his book Ed set about marketing it, and in doing so started to learn his new trade.

The first web sales page and cover ad were, by his own admission, a little rough around the edges. That said, the product did start to sell, allowing him space to think about what improvements were necessary. To find his direction in this, Ed turned his attention towards on-line discussion forums. Here he discovered that providing well informed answers and including his web address in posting certainly did generate traffic. He also commenced a study of the acknowledged masters of internet marketing and had the not uncommon experience of discovering an email testimonial he'd sent to Perry Marshall appearing in articles on numerous sites.

Lesson #2 – Participate in on-line discussion. Always be sure to include your web identification and site address in on-line conversations.

A continued learning curve led to improvements in the website and advertising copy and recognition that the best way forward appeared to be experimentation and testing. To assess the level of click traffic on a potential product, Ed’s preferred method is to ‘buy a bunch of clicks’ and test it. As he says – “there’s nothing like real life, flesh and blood people with their finger on the button”. This method also works for keyword and key-phrase testing and Ed undertakes this basic testing as a preliminary, placing it before product launch.

Of course testing continues after launch, Even if the product is going well, marketing copy and keyword selection can always be improved. First attempts rarely producing the best or most enduring results. Ed relates the tale behind the first Google ad for his Fighter Pilot Productivity site. With the line - "Learn the secrets the government doesn't tell you about how to become a fighter pilot" - he thought he had a winner. While it did, and still does, generate click through it performs at only around thirty percent of later editions.

Lesson #3 – Always seek to guess what goes on inside the head of a potential customer, but never assume to know.

Ed is avid in his conviction that continual testing is the key to success. He takes his lead in this from Joe Sugarman who claimed that as he was not smart enough to figure out how a market strategy would work he needed to test every part of the plan.

Lesson #4 – Be systematic and procedural in your marketing and testing.

While he knew the theory behind continuity strategies, Ed didn't take the plunge of introducing membership until he had two successful sites running and earning. When he finally created members only functionality, he upgraded both sites simultaneously and doubled his business inside one and a half months.

He was so taken aback with the result he spent a week kicking himself for not taking the step eight months earlier.

Membership fees for his sites now take care of all overhead cost and provide a percentage of profit.

Lesson #5 – Be a farmer as well as a hunter.

Ed has now grown four Internet businesses and along the way has also experienced a failure. The trick here he reckons is to accept that a product is not going to sell as early as possible. If performance testing is methodical, this will be apparent at an early stage.

Scaling up an established business can be done by introducing new products, membership and continuity and expanding in-demand elements of an existing product. In Ed's case this meant producing separate manuals to cover specific aspects of his subject in depth.

Live chat has also played a part in this success story. In a virtual face-to-face with a potential client you can ask direct questions and get interesting answers. People open up more and you get to know what they are thinking. This points the way to more penetrative marketing copy. Tracking and testing can also be an effective use for forums such as LivePerson. During the interview Ed was told of an approach using a live chat address in a Google ad to generate closer contact with the potential client. He paused the interview briefly to make notes, underlining the next lesson.

Lesson #6 – Never stop learning. Learn from your customers and learn from the experts.

Through the interview Ed Rush’s basic philosophies become clear and they are all based on training.

He says training up, training down and training across, meaning training the people you work for, training the people who work for you and training the people you work with, is key to handling work load weather you’re flying a fighter plane or running a marketing project. Take control and ensure everyone knows what you expect and what to expect of you.

Lesson #7 – Training is the key – train to be as good as anyone if not better.

Ed says – “In the movie Top Gun, the characters Maverick and Gooch are supposedly gifted in all the things they do. It’s all a load of baloney it’s actually the guy who trains well that does well.”

The same applies in marketing.

Ed Rush is a Marine Corps fighter pilot, author, and info-marketer. His Fighter Pilot Performance for Entrepreneurs program teaches small business owners Top Gun strategies for accelerating productivity, profits, and peace of mind He can be found at www.FlightPlanToWealth.com

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